When you want to hire a taxi in Hainan, negotiate a set price first before getting into the taxi. Hainan taxi has meter, but we better not pay accordingly. Tourists, who don’t know Hainan well enough, may easily get driven around for a much longer ride than what it should be.
Comparing to other places in China, taxi in Hainan isn’t cheap. A 10-minute ride from the airport to the Kempinski Hotel costs RMB 50-60, while a 15-minute ride from the hotel to Sanya City Center costs only RMB 30-50. It all comes down to supply and demand, you see. Taxi fare to anywhere from the airport is expensive, regardless of the destination. The airport is loaded with ignorant tourists. If one tourist doesn’t take the drivers’ offer, there are still planes full of tourists who will.
For long distance destinations, it is probably better off hiring a taxi by the day, which costs only RMB 100. It is such a good deal because some of the sightseeing spots, shops, and restaurants give commission to the driver when he brings tourists there. In addition, the driver is free to pick up other customers when you are not using his service.
And probably because of the commission system, we have heard many stories from our friends and posts on forums about Hainan taxi scams, of the unpleasant experiences of being brought to places where the tourists didn’t request, of drivers getting all rude and ill-mannered when the tourists insisted not going into the shops that were suggested, etc, etc…
So to prevent all these from happening, once we got into a taxi, Yik and I would tell the driver that we were not interested in shopping and asked him to drive us to only the places we requested. This might not have stop the driver from selling us to visit some other shops and restaurants “near-by”, but at least we showed him that we were no dummies, which certainly helped set his expectation low and get him sell us not as hard.
There are taxi scams and tourists traps everywhere in the world. So don’t worry. We just need to be a bit more alert when traveling, so to save ourselves from many unpleasant experiences.
tuk-tuk drivers and taxi drivers, same same 
Hainan taxi driver recommendation
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Many tourist would expect a surcharge to be added to the taxi fare from airports.
A 10 yen difference translates to less than US$2 which is dirt cheap by any standard.
Any tourist who spends so much for air tickets and hotel bills should not make himself/herself unhappy over a US$2 surcharge.
I paid 50 yen for the trip from Mei Lan Airport to Hai Siew Road in Haikou. That translate to less than US$10.
There are not many places where Taxi can be so cheap.
So enjoy your trip and let the Taxi driver make his living, bearing in mind that surcharge is a common practice in many airports.
Bukit, Thanks for pointing this out.
Yes, I agree that no tourist should get unhappy because of a 2-dollar taxi surcharge when they have already spent so much on their air tickets and hotel.
And there are many places with cheap taxi actually, at least in many other places of China. It all comes down to the law of supply and demand, as well as the living standard of that particular town/city.
Cheers!
The other good point about Taxis is it brings you to the doorsteps, without extra charges.
From Sanya airport or Haikou Airport, tourists can take buses provided you know where to drop off.
But if your destination is not along the bus routes, you still got to hop on to a taxi after that, and ended up paying more.
Unlike many other places, Hainan Taxis Drivers are quite honest, and friendly. Once a price is agreed upon, that’s it.
There is no such tricks like ” when I say $, I mean US $ ” or like my friend’s experience that his Taxi driver stops the car at a lonely spot and said ” wait here, I go for a pee ” and my friend ended up getting mugged.
From any point of view, it is worth the $2 surcharge, particularly when you are visiting a city for the first time.
True True. Example, when compare to drivers in India, those in Sanya are honest, definitely play no trick. Haha.