It is the peak summer travel season, and two unreasonable low-cost travel incidents have recently attracted attention:
First, Hainan netizen "Uncle Shuai" posted a video saying that his mother must participate in a "39.9 yuan tour to Guilin for 4 days" package food and accommodation tour group, but he can't persuade him;
The second is that Tianjin unlicensed tour guides insult tourists: "You are God when you spend money, and dog X if you don't spend money."
Up to now, the travel agency involved in Guilin's low-cost tour has confiscated its illegal income and fined 100,000 yuan, and the person in charge of the travel agency has been investigated and fined 20,000 yuan; Tianjin unlicensed tour guides were confiscated of illegal gains and fined 30,000 yuan, which is the highest punishment.
Unreasonable low-cost tours are not new, and the reporter's investigation found that low-cost tour groups have a mature industrial chain in the market. And in recent years, low-cost tour groups have specifically targeted the elderly. They organize senior citizens to participate in lectures, deliver egg noodles, organize square dance competitions in the name of tour groups, and then take them to their destinations for shopping. The tour guides who lead the tour may not have a tour guide card, they are good at sales, and the turnover is the only assessment indicator.
The lower the price of the low-cost tour
The greater the reliance on shopping
This time, the "39.9 yuan tour of Guilin for 4 days" is called "straight hook fishing" because the price is too outrageous.
According to Shangguan News, under normal circumstances, the cost of a tourist route includes at least four aspects: food, accommodation, transportation and travel. From Haikou to Guilin, the fare of taking the bus and train ranges from 150 yuan to 400 yuan, the average fare of the whole local car is about 100 yuan, the accommodation is close to the lowest grade of 50 yuan per capita a night, the meals are all taken care of by the tourists, plus the basic tourism projects, the per capita cost of 4 days and 3 nights is at least 500 yuan. But even such a low-cost product that is not comfortable to travel to, its cost is more than 12 times that of "39.9 yuan to travel to Guilin for 4 days", which has not been included in the labor cost of travel agencies.
Obviously, the price is abnormal, but netizens can't persuade their mother not to join the group. It turned out that the excuse of the low-cost tour guide was that this low-cost group had a "government subsidy"...... Obviously, compared with the previous routines of selling health products, jade, and tea to tourists after joining the group, the words of unreasonable low-cost group solicitation have been updated and iterated.
Targeting the elderly group is one of the salient features of unreasonable low-cost travel. In addition to the fact that the elderly are relatively sensitive to price and are easily attracted by low-cost travel products, some elderly people have limited access to information and lack of risk awareness of low-cost travel, which has become their "weakness".
There are also a very small number of people who know that low-cost travel is unreasonable, and still participate with the mentality of never shopping even if they are scolded, hoping to "gather wool" in reverse, but the travel process actually wastes most of their time in shopping stores. In addition, the premise of "wool" for non-shopping tourists is that the shopping quota of other tourists in the same group is high, which is enough to cover the cost of low-cost tour groups, and "the wool is out of the dog". There are also some tourists who didn't plan to shop, but after joining the group, they bought high-quality products under the herd mentality and the high pressure of the tour guide, and the gains outweighed the losses.
"Unreasonable low-cost travel is a chain of interests, and all links and words of this chain have been carefully designed, which is equivalent to 'group crime', and it is difficult for individual tourists to resist the intensive output of these words. Staying away from unreasonable low-priced groups is the best policy. The person in charge of the domestic tour route of a large travel agency said that from the two unreasonable low-cost tour incidents in Guilin and Tianjin, unlicensed tour guides and unlicensed operations have also brought potential safety hazards to tourists. Once a tourist has a personal and property safety accident during the trip, it will be difficult to effectively protect their own rights and interests.
A number of tourism industry insiders told the "Daily Economic News" reporter, 40 yuan 4 days and 3 nights Guilin tour is a typical low-cost shopping group, usually by the departure of the group responsible for soliciting - the tourist destination of the local agency to arrange accommodation and transportation - drivers, tour guides to visit the attractions and shopping to complete the closed loop, different from the regular tour group, the shopping itinerary of the low-cost tour group is often longer. The tour guide service fee for this kind of shopping group is very low or non-existent, and the income basically depends on the shopping commission, and even the money will be advanced in advance. The group company receives guests, and the competition between the local tour companies will increase the price of the tour group, and the tour guide needs to advance money for food and accommodation, and finally make money by shopping and gambling on shopping. Such tours attract tourists at a very low or no cost, and are often referred to as "zero-fee" or "negative-fee" tours. The industry divides tour groups into pure play groups and shopping groups, and low-cost tour groups are often shopping groups, and the lower the price, the greater the dependence on shopping. Senior tour guide Zhang Lei believes that the price below the cost is low price, "for example, a 6-day tour from Shanghai to Sanya, the normal air ticket and hotel are more than 3,000 yuan, if the charge is only 1,000 yuan, then there is a high probability that there will be shopping, and there will be several shopping spots."
"It's all forced shopping, lunch is steamed buns and porridge"
Under the series of videos exposed by "Uncle Handsome", many netizens left messages saying that they also had similar experiences, and their parents spent "99 yuan", "88 yuan" and "50 yuan" to travel with a group at an ultra-low price, but they spent thousands of yuan when they went home: seven or eight hundred yuan for a pot, 1,688 yuan for a silk quilt, 4,700 yuan for royal jelly, and 20,000 yuan to buy two (fake) jade pendants...
Nowadays, low-cost tour groups are targeting the elderly.
Wenwen's mother also participated in a 100 yuan three-day, four-night tour group, from Hunan to Guangxi, and the entire square dance troupe went to participate in the competition. Wenwen didn't elaborate, but in the past few days, my mother didn't expect that the 100 yuan tour group would have more than 5,000 yuan when she returned home.
Luna's mother joined a low-cost tour group last year, 398 yuan for five days and four nights in Luoyang, a round-trip bus trip, eight or nine hours each way. The reason why it is judged to be low is because the train ticket from Hohhot to Luoyang is nearly 400 yuan for a round trip.
Luna told reporters that during the trip in the past few days, her mother's time to visit attractions and shopping accounted for about half: shopping in the morning, going to attractions in the afternoon, or going to attractions in the morning and shopping in the afternoon. The day after arriving in Luoyang, she went to the health care store in the morning, and she remembered that her mother said that a can of milk powder cost 100 yuan; On the third day, I went to a jewelry store such as jade bracelets; After that, I also went to a shop that sold pots and knives, seven or eight hundred yuan for a pot, and thousands of yuan for a kitchen knife.
Luna's mother is hard of hearing, and she has participated in "the kind of tour group with a little bit of shopping and most of the (time) travel" with her friends before, which is acceptable, but this tour costs seven or eight hundred yuan for one pot, and there are too many memories that impress Luna.
On this trip, Luna's mother spent a total of more than 600 yuan, in addition to the 398 yuan tour fee, and was charged 40 yuan in the service area on the way out, "If you don't give it, you will be thrown in the middle of the way, and you were forced to pay more than 40 yuan of insurance premium", and there is an attraction that charges more than 100 yuan for the entrance fee.
After her mother returned home, Luna made up her mind that she would not let her mother participate in similar tours again, "all of them were forced to shop", except for looking at people's faces, the lunch they ate was porridge and steamed buns, and the accommodation was a hotel with three or four beds in one room and no separate bathroom, and the conditions were very poor.
Luna also thought about complaining about the tour, but she couldn't even find the name of the company behind the tour. She and her mother are in a WeChat group that organizes tours, and the driver and tour guide post travel information in the group, and Luna tried to add the tour guide to WeChat, but it was not passed, and someone asked more in the group, and was kicked out of the group.
He Wei, who has been working in the travel industry for nearly 30 years, observes that the sales of travel agencies often penetrate into the community elderly organization center first, and gradually gain trust by organizing the elderly to participate in activities and giving small gifts such as eggs and noodles. Square dancing, a place where the elderly are concentrated, is also a key target for sales.
"The shopping points for the elderly are also specially designed, mainly kitchenware, health products, bedding, jade, so that the elderly feel that they can use, but the price is high and the profit margin is large." He Wei said.
A "tour guide" is not necessarily a tour guide
The reporter also learned that the most critical role in the low-cost tour group - the "tour guide" of the shopping group is not necessarily a real tour guide, and they often do not necessarily have a tour guide card, or a valid tour guide card.
The tour guide involved in the "forced tourist consumption" notified by the Tianjin Bureau of Culture and Tourism is that the tour guide card has not been renewed after the expiration of the validity period, and it will be cancelled in September 2023, which is an unlicensed tour guide.
Every March and April, He Wei, who has been working in the travel agency for nearly 30 years, will see a large number of low-cost tour group tour guide recruitment advertisements in the circle of friends, He Wei clearly remembers the three hard rules of recruitment: first, want to buy a car and a house; second, to get married and have children; Third, it can withstand pressure. He Wei said bluntly: "It is to be thirty or forty years old, middle-aged people who want to make money, they are under pressure, motivated, and can resist pressure, they will not be as high-spirited as young people, and they are not prone to problems." ”
He Wei said that for the tour guides of low-cost tour groups, it does not matter whether they have a tour guide certificate, the important thing is to be able to bill, and the company's only assessment standard is the turnover. According to He Wei, after the interview is successful, he will first pay a training fee of five or six thousand yuan, conduct a period of closed training, and invite special tutors to train and learn various special skills.
"They will learn how to deal with various types of tourists, various routines, such as in addition to the traditional purchase of things to introduce product functions, they may say how much money will be donated to the disaster area when they buy this thing, and if this does not work, they will change their rhetoric the next day, talk about health, family affection, etc., and have a strong psychological quality." He Wei concluded that they will remember the information of each guest, prepare targeted words, constantly test, and then accurately "grasp" the guest.
He Wei said, "These informal low-cost tour groups, the tour guides do not even have a qualification certificate, they are not afraid of complaints at all, as long as they can make a deal." On the contrary, qualified tour guides and branded hostels will not do low-cost tours, because in the event of a serious complaint, both the tour guide and the travel agency may face the risk of huge fines and revocation of their licenses.
Li Li, a senior tour guide, described a tour guide who can make bills is like a fortune teller, knowing what kind of guests are at a glance, knowing what kind of people are when they hear someone talking, imitating the accent of many places across the country, observing carefully, and seeing people thoroughly. He Wei, Zhang Lei and Li Li all came to a conclusion: an excellent shopping group tour guide is a top salesman, and a few top sales can earn hundreds of thousands of yuan or even millions of yuan a year.
As far as Zhang Lei knows, for example, the itinerary of the 3-day tour of Jiuzhaigou, the income of the pure play group tour guide may be about 2,000 yuan, but the shopping group tour guide, it is normal for the capable to earn 100,000 yuan or 20,000 yuan, and the exaggerated 3 days can earn more than 100,000 yuan, but the less earning may be only a few hundred yuan, and the gap is very large.
In addition, He Wei told reporters that some shopping stores dedicated to tour groups are often concentrated in specific areas, and a number of travel agencies have established long-term and stable cooperative relations, these shopping stores may actually be subsidiaries of travel agencies, tour guides become shopping store sales, rebates become commissions, and flexible control of prices Travel agencies will also have higher profits.
[Source: CCTV]
![Hurry up and persuade your parents! The truth behind the "low-cost tour group": drinking porridge and nibbling steamed buns, forced shopping[fig]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACwAAAAAAQABAAACAkQBADs=)