Studies On Legal Issues Of Self-service Travel Disputes

With the advantage of freedom and self-service, self-service travel receives more and more popularities and becomes the first choice among tourists. Tourism Law of People’s Republic of China was enforced in2003, which banned travel agency to arrange shopping and self-paying projects. This regulation brings influence to the package tour, the price of which goes high. As a result of this, more and more people choose self-service travel. Meanwhile, lots of disputes emerge. The first self-service dispute happened in2006, Nanning. From then on, legal issues in the aspect of self-service travel receive heated academic discussions. The aim of Tourism Law of People’s Republic of China is to adjust the relationship among tourists, travel auxiliary servant, and travel agency. However, it lacks rules aiming at self-service travel participated by tourists with full voluntary. This causes lots of disputes. This thesis focuses on the disputes in self-service travel, and is composed of four chapters.First chapter is the definition of self-service travel and the judicial status quo of disputes in Chinese self-service travel. These exists no clear definition of self-service travel in law. To be precise, self-service travels staged by travel agency or organized by for-profit club are other patterns of package travel. Thus, the author gives a clear definition of self-service travel in this chapter. Then, two case studies will analyze the judicial status quo of disputes in self-service travel.Second chapter is to analyze the rights and obligations of organizers and participants in self-service travel. The author provides a detailed analysis of safety guarantee obligation of organizers and mutual rescuing obligation of participants in self-service travel, after which the author believes that the organizer of self-service travel must take safety guarantee obligation as general rational men, and participant must take mutual recuing obligation.Third chapter discusses application of the assumption of risk principle in self-service travel. There is no rule about assumption or risk principle. However, in some specific practical cases, this principle has been invoked to solve problems. Based on this, author analyzes the application of assumption of risk principle. And the conclusion here is that it should be distinguished applicable.Fourth chapter is about the reference to the foreign legislation. Travel industry in western countries is far more developed. There also lacks clear rules and definition about self-service travel. However, fewer disputes exist in western courtiers. We should discover what behind it. On one hand, China needs to learn complete management system. On the other hand, after observing the solutions that western courtiers used to solve the disputes, the author believes that comparative negligence and assumption of risk principle are of great significance.Based on the analysis above, the author proposes five suggestions:clear definition of self-service travel, refining the safety guarantee obligation of organizers, clear the mutual rescuing obligation of participants, differentiating the application of assumption of risk principle and establishment and improvement of relevant supporting system.