China’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism issued a circular on Monday calling for a revamp of the mainland tourism market, cracking down on unreasonably low-priced tours and putting an end to tour guides forcing tour participants to make purchases.
Outbound tours from mainland China resumed in February, but the resumption of tours also brought other tourism problems, including the proliferation of unlicensed tour guides and forced purchases by tour groups.
The Ministry of Culture and Tourism noted that “the overall tourism market is running steadily and gradually showing recovery, but unreasonably low-priced tours, tour guides abusing tourists and forced shopping have emerged.
“The Ministry of Culture and Tourism requires travel agencies to strictly comply with inbound and outbound group travel management policies, to sign travel contracts with tourists and promote the use of electronic contracts, and to not change the itinerary without authorization.”
The so-called “unreasonably low priced tours” refers to instances where some travel agencies will offer relatively inexpensive tour fares to attract tourists to join the tours but then force them to shop for specified goods upon arrival at the tour destination.
The spectre of illegal tours has also appeared in Macau, with the Macao Government Tourism Office reporting that between 1 January and 4 April, it conducted 383 inspections and detected five cases of suspected unlicensed tour guides. These cases of non-compliance were reported to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism on the mainland.
