On The Legal Regulation And Governance Of Free-Of-Charge Tours

In mid and late1990s,"free-of-charge tours" phenomenon appeared in some domestic tourist destinations whose tourism markets were relatively developed, as well as some outbound destinations. Thereafter, it started to spread in the whole national tourism market. On the surface, free-of-charge tours are a new kind of tourism business model "invented" between travel agencies based on voluntary market transaction behavior. In essence, however, free-of-charge tours go beyond the legal boundaries in the real operation. On the one hand, from the perspective of the anti-unfair competition law, free-of-charge tours are a low-priced dumping and unfair competition of commercial bribery, and bring great damage to the market competition order; on the other hand, from the perspective of the protection of consumer rights and interests, as a tourism business model, free-of-charge tours are accompanied with behaviors violating consumer rights and interests, such as the price fraud, forced shopping, etc. In reality, it is common for the travel agencies to deceive the tourists into the trap of free-of-charge tours and violate their lawful rights and interests.However, the current legal regulation towards free-of-charge tours in China is unsatisfying. Existing laws and regulations on the control measures towards the free-of-charge tours are mostly one-sided. They have mainly focused on prohibiting the improper competition between travel agencies to maintain the market order of tourism industry. The legal regulation with the concept of tourism consumers’legal rights and interests is still absent. As a result, the regulation towards free-of-charge tours is "to cure the symptoms, not the disease" and it is difficult to effectively eliminate the phenomenon of free-of-charge tours. What’s worse, many laws are made by different departments, which also bring difficulties to the protection of tourism consumer rights and the judicial practice.Therefore, faced with the vicious circle of "disorder and regulation go along with each other" in chronic and worsening free-of-charge tours, it is necessary for us to explore the essence of the phenomena of free-of-charge tours, reveal the consumption trap in it. We should take the review of national Tourism Law (Draft) as an opportunity to make comprehensive reflections upon the existing legal system of regulating free-of-charge tours and provides all-round and reasonable countermeasures and suggestions for the regulation and control of such an operation mode.