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Recently, some netizens posted a video complaining that the "6-day tour of Yunnan" they participated in was like experiencing a nightmare. In the video, the tour guide Lu threatened: "Spend the money you should spend...... I'm definitely much better than you. I have a few operation methods with no moral bottom line and no conscience bottom line to make you end your trip unsafely. ”
Forced shopping is often associated with low-cost tours. First, induce consumers to sign up at a low price, then transfer tourists to travel agencies, tour guides and drivers to travel, and finally induce and force tourists to consume. There have been a lot of media reports on such things, and it can be said that they have been banned repeatedly. Of course, there are many reasons: it is difficult to define low-cost groups, tourists are greedy for cheap, and tourism products in some areas are caught in homogeneous price wars, which will make unreasonable low-cost groups frequent, and then there will be forced shopping chaos.
But the question is, why does this "business model" last, and why do they dare to do it?
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On the one hand, when people come out to travel, their willingness to consume is also stronger, and they are willing to spend money; on the other hand, they are also faceless when others buy the same tour group; finally, there are also verbal inducements, soft coercion, and business lobbying by tour guides. In this scenario, it is easy for people to be soft-eared and pay for consumption. This is essentially the same as marketing in barbershops and beauty shops. The difference is that the marketing of the barbershop can only last for half an hour or an hour, and consumers are unwilling, so they can get rid of the marketing by raising their feet and leaving. But when traveling, life is unfamiliar and there is no transportation, so the compulsion of the tour guide is greater and more difficult to get rid of.
Generally, when the collective encounters injustice, many people are unwilling to be the one who comes out. If people can't resist, they will convince themselves in turn and rationalize their situation, so tourists will also convince themselves in turn: Isn't it just to play? Isn't it just for consumption? And the tour fee is so cheap, it always has to make people make money. As a result, although this kind of shopping is compulsory, in most cases, tourists and guides are relatively peaceful, and this "business model" can be stumbled and maintained. Until they met consumers who were unwilling to "surrender", until they encountered over-the-top tour guides, and even escalated soft coercion to hard coercion, and finally things got bigger.
The essence of this "business model" is, of course, a deception. If this kind of scam can be realized, it has to rely on the last link, that is, the soft or even hard coercion of tour guides and merchants. Verbal coercion, threats, and detaining tourists in shopping stores are essentially a law and order problem. Tourist attractions are often in remote places, the so-called sky is high and the emperor is far away, and public services such as public security will be poor.
It is not difficult to imagine that the merchants are locals, and the tour guides are locals, and there are various connections in the local area. If some ordinary disputes are not dealt with seriously and the big things are small, the tour guide will have nothing to fear, and this "business model" will work, and then spread again. Therefore, there is another very important reason why this "business model" of luring tourism can be sustained, that is, the local public security public services are insufficient, the police punishment is not enough, and the standards of the law are not strictly followed.
In 2023, the General Office of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism issued the "Notice on Further Regulating the Order of the Tourism Market", which proposes to severely crack down on market chaos such as "unreasonable low-cost tours". However, the cultural and tourism departments do not have many methods, and can only "identify as many untrustworthy entities as possible", and increase the intensity of supervision and control of the operation of travel agencies and the practice of tour guides. In essence, these methods are to solve public security incidents from a commercial point of view, and the effect is naturally not obvious. Obviously, as long as it is profitable, someone will do it, and commercial penalties are not enough to form a deterrent.
In this incident, the tour guide Lu was only revoked his tour guide certificate, and the company involved was suspended for rectification. For another example, the previous incident of "37 tourists who did not buy mattresses and were detained from shopping stores" was only ordered by the relevant departments to stop operating, fined the unlicensed group leaders and handed over the travel agency involved to the territory for processing.
In fact, the cultural and tourism department also knows where the solution is. The "Notice on Further Regulating the Order of the Tourism Market" proposes that local cultural and tourism departments should actively cooperate with market supervision, public security, transportation and other departments to form a joint work force, and establish and improve the collaborative supervision mechanism such as joint consultation, joint interview, and law enforcement cooperation.
However, it is clear that the impetus of the cultural and tourism sector is not enough, and the government should actively coordinate with the departments of cultural tourism, public security, market supervision, and transportation to jointly solve the chaos of forced shopping, so as to interrupt the last link of this "business model", eliminate low-cost groups, and promote the sustainable development of the local scenic economy.
Source: CCTV