The tourism market is picking up quickly, and the call to revise the tourism law is increasing
Improve tourism legislation to make tourists feel at ease
□ Our reporter Zhu Ningning
"One ticket is hard to find" during the Golden Week reappears.
Seeing this year's "May Day" holiday is approaching, many people share the same feeling that it is too difficult to go out.
Starting from April 16th, all major platforms will start pre-sale of train tickets starting from April 30th.
On the day of the opening, most of the line tickets appeared "seconds".
At the same time, air tickets have also risen in volume and price, and even some business class with popular routes of up to 10,000 yuan have been sold out.
Those who don't have tickets are worried, and those who buy tickets are also worried.
Going out to play is worried that the scenic area will be crowded and the quality of tourism will inevitably decrease.
Affected by the epidemic, many people have not had the opportunity to travel for more than a year. In addition, they are basically limited to domestic travel. Therefore, some insiders predict that this year's "May 1st" Golden Week will be the "hottest" Golden Week in history.
In order to further rectify outstanding problems such as "unreasonable low-price travel" in the tourism market, and create a good market environment for the resumption of work and production in the tourism industry, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism has recently continued to promote special rectification actions for unauthorized operation of travel agencies.
Some insiders in the industry pointed out in an interview with a reporter from the Rule of Law Daily that as the epidemic prevention and control situation continues to improve and the tourism market is picking up rapidly, supervision should be strengthened in a timely manner to severely punish all kinds of tourism chaos. It is recommended that relevant legislation be improved as soon as possible. Promote the healthy and orderly development of my country's tourism market on track.
The anomie of the tourism market has been repeatedly banned
Going out to play was originally a happy thing.
However, some chaos in the tourism market that has been repeatedly prohibited will not only destroy tourists' interest in traveling, but also affect the healthy development of the entire tourism industry.
Among them, the phenomenon of tour guides forcing tourists to shop due to "unreasonable low-cost travel" has been widely criticized as a trigger for disorder in the tourism market.
In fact, the governance of "unreasonable low-price travel" began as early as the mid to late 1990s.
Since then, my country has successively promulgated administrative regulations and local legislation, and law enforcement agencies have been stepping up crackdowns, and the Tourism Law has also made this a key governance issue.
Article 35 of the Tourism Law stipulates that travel agencies shall not organize tourism activities at unreasonably low prices, lure tourists, and obtain illegitimate benefits such as rebates by arranging shopping or paying separately for tourism items.
Travel agencies who organize and receive tourists shall not designate specific shopping places or arrange separately paid travel items... In the event of violation of the provisions of the preceding two paragraphs, the tourists have the right to request the travel agency to process and return the goods within 30 days after the end of the travel itinerary. Advance the payment of the returned goods in advance, or refund the cost of separately paid travel items.
However, the effect of law enforcement has not been as expected.
In recent years, some media have successively exposed cases of tourist guides forcing tourists to buy jade jewellery and other cases, constantly challenging the nerves of the public.
In addition, misconducts such as random disclosure of tourists' personal information, unauthorized changes to travel service items and service standards, and refusal to compensate according to contract standards after infringements have been repeatedly prohibited, which test the management department’s ability to manage the market and seriously affect my country’s tourism. Sustainable development of the industry.
Thoughts on Governance of Tourism Market Worth Reflection
"To govern the tourism market, we must always adhere to the rule of law thinking, identify the crux of the problem based on the actual situation, and conduct targeted regulation." Fu Linfang, a professor at Zhejiang Vocational College of Tourism, believes that we should reflect on the governance ideas for anomie behavior in the tourism market.
Taking the governance of "unreasonable low-price travel" as an example, in Fu Linfang's view, the current "blocking" method in Article 35 of the Tourism Law will bring high administrative costs and inefficiency, and a combination of dredging and blocking should be adopted. .
Specifically, the first is the "sparse" means to give tourists the "shopping right to repent", that is, tourists who shop in shopping places arranged by the travel agency have the right to return the goods to the travel agency within seven days from the end of the trip, and the travel agency should pay for the return in advance paragraph.
"In this way, travel agencies will choose high-quality and inexpensive shopping stores to meet the normal shopping needs of tourists, and tour guides must rely on sincere and high-quality services to obtain remuneration, and consumers will also receive satisfactory services." In this way, severe penalties should be imposed on travel agencies that refuse to perform their return obligations and forced consumption.
It is worth mentioning that there are many new forms of business in the tourism industry. Some tourism projects are fun to stimulate the first, but the existing laws and regulations and industry standards are not applicable, which also brings a lot of supervision and governance. problem.
"Tourism safety is a high-pressure issue in the tourism industry. Certain unregulated, unlawful, and unstandardized'three nos' tourism projects are precisely the areas where security risks accumulate. Although the tourism law has special regulations, it is far from keeping up. New development forms. Who will supervise and how to manage these should be clarified through legislation." Fu Linfang believes that preventing tourism safety risks should be a key issue that needs to be addressed in tourism legislation.
Fu Linfang also suggested that legislation should actively introduce the idea of social collaborative governance, make use of social forces, and govern through industry associations to formulate safety standards, service standards, and self-discipline conventions.
"The government can provide a series of supporting mechanisms from the policy to promote the effective start of the social collaborative governance mechanism. In this way, the effective management of the safety risks of the new tourism industry can be realized without increasing the tourism legislation." Fu Linfang said.
In addition, in Fu Linfang's view, improving the travel insurance system is a top priority.
"At present, only travel agency liability insurance is mandatory, and its positive effect is very significant. However, a large number of other tourism formats, especially many high-risk new formats, do not have similar insurance, which is very detrimental to both tourists and enterprises. The next step, Legislation should make more comprehensive and reasonable provisions on this."
The voice of imperfect system design is increasing
my country is rich in tourism resources, but with the advent of the era of mass tourism, the contradiction between the increasing demand of tourists and the limited supply of tourism resources has begun to become prominent.
Many high-quality tourism resources have been over-utilized, especially with the rise of rural tourism in recent years, some primitive tourism resources have begun to appear in danger of being developed disorderly.
At the same time, online travel and offline transactions coexist, cruise travel, RV camping, low-altitude flying, etc. have become new favorites. Summer travel, ice and snow travel, and night travel are becoming more and more popular. Study tours, self-guided tours, health and medical tours, etc. Constantly emerging... At present, the new tourism industry has also brought many challenges to the legislation.
It is worth mentioning that although there are many reasons for the phenomenon of anomie in the tourism market that cannot be stopped repeatedly, the imperfect design of the tourism law and regulation system is one of the important reasons.
Therefore, in recent years, the call for amendments to the tourism law has been increasing.
It is understood that my country's tourism legislation first began in the 1980s.
In 2013, the Tourism Law was promulgated and implemented.
In addition, there are many regulations such as the "Regulations on Travel Agency" and "Regulations on the Management of Tour Guides."
It should be noted that with the improvement of the tourism legal system, the order of my country's tourism market has improved and the awareness of tourists' rights has continued to increase. However, some stubborn problems in the tourism market have not been fundamentally rectified, and there are still many deficiencies in laws and regulations.
Tourism legislation needs to implement the new development concept
As my country's tourism industry enters a new stage of development, the consumption patterns of tourists and the tourism market environment have undergone great changes, and it is necessary to amend the law.
"Tourism legislation needs to implement new development concepts and keep pace with the times." Meng Fanzhe, professor of Beijing International Studies University and executive vice president and secretary-general of the Tourism Law Research Association of Beijing Law Society, believes that in order to realize the governance system and governance of the tourism industry To modernize capabilities, the revision of tourism legislation should focus on several key points.
First of all, we should focus on the protection and utilization of tourism resources.
"At present, my country's legislation on the protection of tourism resources is not perfect. The tourism law only provides principles. The provisions of the "Interim Measures for the Protection of Tourism Resources" are too simplistic and lack legal liability for damage to tourism resources, which makes it difficult to effectively protect them. There is still overlap between regulations.” Meng Fanzhe suggested that in the next step, we should combine the opportunities of national park construction and take national park legislation as the command to comprehensively sort out and revise existing legislation concerning tourism resources.
Second, attention should be paid to the promotion and regulation of new business formats.
"The rapid growth of the new tourism industry is obviously unexpected when the Tourism Law was enacted. The current tourism law in my country is mainly to adjust the traditional tourism form of group tours organized by travel agencies. This has caused a lack of corresponding new problems in many fields. The adjustment of laws and regulations has resulted in the irregular development of the industry, and the rights and interests of tourists cannot be effectively protected. These problems need to be resolved in time by legislation." Meng Fanzhe said.
"In short, during the '14th Five-Year Plan' period, the opportunities and challenges faced by my country's tourism development determine that tourism legislation must uphold the concept of high-quality development and green development, adhere to the people-centered principle, proceed from reality, and do it in a coordinated manner. To scientific legislation." Meng Fanzhe said.