A Research On The Legal Regulation Of Cheap Tours

Owing to our long history and culture, vast land, abundant tourist resources, tourist industry in China has great potentials. As a tourist industry enjoying the reputation of "smokeless industry", tourist industry plays a vital role in promoting economic development. Although the global tourist economy is increasing, the development of tourism in China is in its bottleneck period. Widespread law-breaking phenomenon covers a variety of forms. Since the 21 st century, the phenomenon of low-cost tours is widespread in China's tourism market, which undermines our tourism market order. Although on the surface this kind of business model is built on the basis of equality and consensus between travel agencies and consumers, in reality, it is accompanied by the price fraud and forced shopping behavior. It is a serious violation of the legal rules and the interests of consumers. As the phenomenon is intensified, the entire tourist industry deviates from benign orbit. Therefore, in order to regulate the tourist market order and protect the legitimate interests of consumers, this thesis carries out an in-depth analysis of the root causes of the phenomenon of low-cost tours, completely digging up the plan to solve the problems in order to ensure China's sustainable development of tourist industry.The thesis is divided into four parts:The first part is about the summary of the event that Kunming tour guide abused tourists. This section first briefly describes the whole event. Then it sorts through the causes and consequences of the conflict between the tour guide and the visitor, as well as the penalties for the related tour guide and travel agency given by the local tourist authorities. Finally it sums up three disputes that trigger the event. Firstly, behind the public condemnation of the tourist guide, we must find out who should be blamed: the travel agency, tour guide or the tourist; secondly, whether consumers have the right to avoid forced shopping in a low-cost tour; thirdly, how to improve the law regulation of low-cost tours.The second part is about the investigation of the current situation of low-cost tours. The first part explains the principles of the low-cost tours. After judging its internal logic, the thesis summarizes that in a cheap tour, travel agencies attract tourists by lowering the tour price, and they have to rely on tourists' consumption profit; secondly, its business model which is characterized by the prices lower than costs, rebates, forced shopping, including the illegitimate competition acts of price dumping, commercial bribery, false advertising, severely violates consumers' legal interests. Therefore, travel agencies are the initiator of the cheap tours, and lead vicious competition disrupts the competition order of the tourism market, going beyond the boundaries of the law; finally, it sums up the negative effects of low-priced tour phenomenon: low-cost operation increasing the burden of the operation in travel agencies, serious tourism product homogeneity hindering innovative enthusiasm of travel agencies, and the harmful cheap tours seriously impeding the development of tourism and undermining social stability. All of these effects indicate that the problem must be resolved.The third part analyses the causes of low-priced tours. First, this part analyses that the competition in our travel market is so intensive that travel agencies have to resort to dumping and other unfair competition means to gain market position. Second, information failure is a major drawback of the tourism market. As the vulnerable party of the information, tourist can not objectively choose the tourist products through their own judgment, unable to avoid forced shopping in a low-cost tour; thirdly, a strong traditional system limits the normal development of tourism, such as the absence of tour guide pay system exacerbating the occurrence of phenomenon of the low-cost tour against the legitimate interests of consumers; the incomplete legal system eventually making all of these violations not timely and effective regulated, resulting in uncontrolled tourism industry order.The fourth part is about the strategies about perfecting the legal regulation of the cheap tours. This section summarizes the countermeasures to regulate the cheap tour. First, in terms of legal countermeasure, it is necessary to build a comprehensive legal system, and introduce relevant specific implementation details combined with "Travel Act". By doing so, the law can work well in practice; secondly, in terms of the administrative system, it should remove the existing administrative institutional barriers, establish tourism information disclosure system in order to increase transparency, and improve the tour guide treatment remuneration system to protect and promote the development of green tourism; finally, in terms of enforcement mechanism, it should strengthen law enforcement, improve law enforcement supervision, protect law enforcement relief, and develop sustainable tourism economy. Only by doing so, can low-cost tours truly be eliminated by the market, and finally achieve healthy and orderly development of tourism.