“The working class spends 3,000 yuan to 8,000 yuan, and the urban white-collar workers spend 8,000 yuan to 20,000 yuan” “According to your occupation, let’s tailor clothes, don’t drop the price.” Recently, the chaos of forced shopping by tour guides has been exposed and new tricks have been introduced.
Video screenshot (Source: Jimu News)
According to The Paper, tourist Liu Min ( A pseudonym) and a friend signed up for a 6-day, 5-night Yunnan tour group. The total cost of the two-person tour was 1,580 yuan, including room and board, but not air tickets. She introduced that before joining the group, she asked the staff if the tour group needed shopping, and the staff responded that the group was not a shopping group. However, during the travel process, the tour guide coerced the tourists: knowing their ID number and home address, if they did not shop, they would recover the difference in travel fees, and they also divided the shopping consumption level for the tourists.
On the afternoon of August 3, the staff of the Kunming Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism in Yunnan responded that they have paid attention to the matter and are currently investigating and handling it. Under the investigation of the regulatory authorities, whether there are compulsory shopping in the tour group will be revealed. However, judging from the exposed video, the tour guide involved was blackmailing tourists while coercing them, and even “arranging the shopping indicators clearly” according to their professional skills did violate professional norms, and there was also a lot of suspicion of slaughtering customers. .
I wanted to go out with the group to relax and save the trouble of checking the route and doing the strategy, but I had to listen to the black-hearted tour guide on the bus constantly “broken thoughts”. Such a bad experience has been encountered by many Tourists complained, and some even bluntly said that they “will not sign up for groups again”. It can be said that the forced shopping chaos is not only a violation of the legitimate rights and interests of consumers, but also a damage to the image of the local tourism industry and an erosion of the credibility of travel agencies.
Image source: Visual China
< p> Objectively speaking, with the implementation of the “strictest in history” tourism rectification measures in Yunnan Province in 2017, chaos such as forced shopping, induced shopping, bullying and slaughtering customers has been curbed to a certain extent. However, it is undeniable that the “amazing” performance of individual Yunnan tour guides in recent years has attracted a lot of attention. In 2017, a tour guide in Yunnan was exposed and angrily scolded tourists for “you low-priced tours, you give me the feeling that you are cheating food and drinking here”. In 2021, a tour guide of a Yunnan tour group was accused of coercing and enticing tourists to spend, and also claimed that “not spending will affect credit reporting.” All kinds of “persuading purchase” words are annoying.
Yunnan’s tourism market is huge and mixed, and sometimes violators are unavoidable. On the other hand, the existence of these chaotic phenomena should never be ignored. Further improvement of relevant regulations and strict implementation of existing measures can realize the orderly development of the industry. For example, in the “Notice of Measures for the Remediation of Tourism Market Order in Yunnan Province”, “unreasonably low-cost tourism” is clearly prohibited, and measures for “blacklisting” and industry bans are proposed. However, in the chaos of slaughtering passengers mentioned above, many tour groups still adopt the model of “low group price + high consumption”, which has also become a “pretext” for illegal tour guides to use language violence against tourists.
Take tourist Liu Min’s group fee as an example, the cost for two people for six days and five nights is only 1580 yuan, an average of about 132 yuan per person per day. In the related video, the tour guide also said that “your tour fee is indeed used up” and “persuaded” the tourists to “buy the money you saved to buy something you like.” So, why can such a low-priced group that obviously does not meet the reasonable price of the market open a group? What are the main ways of marketing? How long has the violation been in place? Starting from these problems is conducive to further making effective remediation plans.
For example, if online marketing is an important channel for its publicity, the competent authorities will strengthen cooperation with relevant platforms, use technological means to strengthen review, and unblock reporting channels, which will help to keep an eye on unreasonably low prices. group to prevent more tourists from being deceived. In addition, it is also extremely necessary to severely punish illegal travel agencies and tour guides in accordance with the law. Forcing tourists to shop has a lot of room for profit, and violators can’t take chances. In 2017, a tour guide in Jinghong City, Yunnan Province clashed with tourists for forcing shopping while leading a group, claiming that he “cheated food and drink” and used verbal abuse, and was later sentenced to 6 months in prison and fined by the court for the crime of forced trading. 2000 dollars.
As some lawyers pointed out, Yunnan tour guides were sentenced for the crime of forced trading, which has a strong benchmarking significance and will produce relatively good social effects. Only when every similar incident is dealt with seriously can it form a sufficient deterrent and truly bring tourists a sense of security. Of course, for tourists, it is also necessary to increase their vigilance and do not believe in so-called low-cost tours such as “880 yuan for a seven-day tour”. If you encounter the behavior of the tour guide’s forced consumption, you can collect key evidence and take the initiative to protect your rights under the condition of self-protection.
With the popularity of review websites and the improvement of the navigation system, independent travel has become the choice of more and more people, and the traditional group model has been impacted. Under such circumstances, instead of raising awareness of the crisis and striving to create a more personalized and distinctive travel experience for consumers, some tourism practitioners are full of “killer thinking”, using cynicism, insults and threats, and deliberately black-faced Forcing consumption through various deceitful and deceitful methods is tantamount to drinking poison to quench thirst, and it should become a thing of the past.
Written by Ren Guanqing
Editor by Huang Shuai
Source: China Youth Daily Client