Can rectification work?, Yunnan's "Unreasonable Low Price Tour" Shopping | Tour Guide | Low Price
This summer, Yunnan tourism has repeatedly attracted public attention due to issues such as "low-priced tour groups," "black tour guides," "forced shopping," and "prohibition of journalists and lawyers reporting low prices.". For this reason, Yunnan Province recently held a meeting requiring travel agencies and tour guides to strictly prohibit arranging team shopping during their itinerary. An internal notice shows that the province requires strict inspections and rectification to begin on July 27th, with a "unified action throughout the province.".
The chaos of low-priced tour groups in Yunnan has a long history, which is closely related to both the external environmental factors of the overall price war in the tourism industry and the characteristics of the Yunnan tourism market itself. How much can we expect from Yunnan's heavy lifting of low-priced tours?
[1]
According to market rules, if the cost of an item is 2000 yuan, the selling price must be higher than 2000 yuan in order for the merchant to make money. But in the tourism industry, this pattern has not only been broken, but has also become a "convention": a Yunnan 6-day 5-night travel route that includes airfare, hotels, cars, scenic spot tickets, and tour guide services may cost travel agencies 5000 yuan, but the price of customers may be 3000 yuan, 2000 yuan, or even lower. Travel agencies can only recover costs by relying on shopping during the journey and self funded project rebates. Most of the time, the pressure of receiving commission returns is transferred to tour guides who are in a disadvantaged position.
Under normal circumstances, as an employee of a travel agency, tour guides should have five insurances, one fund, and a salary. However, another peculiar aspect of the tourism industry is that, except for a few full-time tour guides who have companies paying five insurances, one fund, and a salary, a large number of individual tour guides do not have a fixed unit and can only earn income by leading a group. Therefore, these individual tour guides often become recipients of low-priced tour groups. Some of them even need to pay a discount to buy a group to survive. Under such a distorted operating chain, once the tour guide "buys" a low-priced group of tourists who do not shop, the tour guide will lose money, leading to various conflicts and disputes related to shopping. This summer, similar phenomena are particularly prominent.
This abnormal operating mode has existed for a long time, naturally because some people have benefited from it. For example, some tour guides are particularly adept at deceiving others. Bringing low-priced tour groups not only saves money, but also allows them to earn money from tourists' shopping. Corresponding tour groups and local reception agencies can also recover costs. In this process, the rights and interests of tourists are damaged. They not only have extremely limited time and depth to visit real tourist attractions, but also usually buy high-quality goods. They may also be threatened by language from tour guides during the itinerary.
But at a higher level, tour guides, local service providers, and group organizations within this distorted chain of interests will ultimately become victims——
When low-priced tour guides become the mainstream of the industry, it is difficult for individual tour guides to resist this trend, nor can they gain a sense of professional achievement and honor, and can only be deeply immersed in the shopping quagmire for a long time;
Low priced local travel agencies and group travel agencies can only coax and deceive tourists in the customer acquisition process, making it difficult for tourists with poor experience to become repeat customers and further affecting the choices of other tourists, thereby increasing the cost of customer acquisition for travel agencies;
For the destination, this operating mode is even more beneficial. Therefore, the low-priced shopping group has led to a multi-party loss situation in the tourism industry, and everyone is swept into it, which is not worth the loss.
[2]
If the weakness of tour guides and the prevalence of low-priced tour groups are common phenomena in the tourism industry, why are there relatively more shopping disputes exposed on Yunnan tourism websites among so many destinations in the country? This is certainly because Yunnan has abundant tourism resources and a large tourist base, which is also related to the unique characteristics of its tourism market.
As a major tourism province, Yunnan has numerous tourist destinations, including Kunming, Dali, Lijiang, Shangri La, Lugu Lake, Tengchong, Xishuangbanna, etc. Almost every destination has its own unique characteristics. But these destinations are not close to each other: 320 kilometers from Kunming to Dali, 540 kilometers to Xishuangbanna, 188 kilometers from Dali to Lijiang, and 211 kilometers from Lijiang to Lugu Lake... Most first-time visitors hope to visit Yunnan and travel several more places, and group tours are the most worry free and labor-saving choice. Therefore, compared to other domestic tourist destinations, the probability of group tours in Yunnan is higher, and the tourist base is also larger.
Secondly, Yunnan tourism has an environment that is prone to giving rise to low-priced shopping groups. There are many ethnic minorities in Yunnan, and shopping groups can not only buy various ethnic clothing, embroidery and other handicrafts, but also special products such as silver jewelry, Pu'er tea, jade, and medicinal herbs. The latter few special products have a higher premium compared to ordinary products, making it difficult for tourists to understand and increasing the possibility of being "slaughtered". Many low-priced Yunnan tour groups take tourists to shopping stores for such products in order to recoup costs or further make money.
From the feedback from tourists, it can be seen that there has been no substantial change in the operating mode of low-priced and group tours in Yunnan, whether before or after the epidemic. But there seems to be more negative news exposed this year, firstly because many tourists pay more attention to the quality of tourism after the epidemic and are unwilling to tolerate the low cost-effectiveness of shopping groups; The second reason is that some tour guides have struggled to make money in the past three years, and their appearance has become even worse after the market recovers, which has intensified the conflict.
[3]
In fact, Yunnan has long been committed to rectifying tourism chaos. As early as 2017, Yunnan banned "unreasonable low-priced travel" and stipulated that violators would be blacklisted; In 2018, the then Governor of Yunnan Province, Ruan Chengfa, issued multiple instructions regarding "unreasonable low-priced tourism" and introduced the "strictest" governance measures in Yunnan's history, promising to fundamentally solve the tourism chaos within a year.
For local government departments in Yunnan, the rectification of low-priced tour groups is aimed at maintaining the image of tourist destinations. Any domestic tourist destination needs to continuously attract tourists to consume and drive GDP, especially Yunnan, which is supported by the tourism industry. Due to limited flight recovery and visa restrictions for outbound travel this year, many high net worth tourists who were originally scheduled to leave during the summer have gone to Yunnan, Xinjiang, and other places. These tourists also care more about the overall environment of their destinations.
However, from the actual situation, the past few rectifications have not been able to solve the fundamental problem. For local travel agencies in Yunnan, not offering low-priced shopping groups means that they need to comprehensively increase their travel quotes. However, there will always be travel agencies that are unwilling to follow the rules and continue to follow the low-priced group routine. It will be difficult for quality local travel agencies to obtain stable customer sources. Under this prisoner's dilemma, the ultimate result is for everyone to continue to work at low prices and rely on shopping to make a profit. It is more difficult to touch the interests than the soul, which is the fundamental reason why low-priced tourism in Yunnan is difficult to ban.
For the main customer group of tourist groups, the long-standing low prices in the tourism market have also made them accustomed to it. Once the overall price of tourist groups returns to the cost range, it will undoubtedly cause tourist loss. Moreover, if local travel agencies that are accustomed to offering low-priced shopping tours can offer truly high-quality and high priced tourism products, it is also a question mark. Can the time originally used for shopping allow tourists to experience truly unique attractions and projects? Can the tour guide's creative guidance for shopping be replaced with more high-quality cultural commentary?
To truly solve the problem of Yunnan shopping groups, it is difficult for the government's top-down rectification to be effective in the long term. As long as someone is greedy for cheap goods, low-priced shopping groups will "burn endless wildfires and spring breeze will bloom again." Of course, after the epidemic, people attach more importance to the quality of tourism, and the group of middle-aged and young people who travel freely is also growing, and the survival space of low-priced tourism will be continuously compressed.
At the same time, we also look forward to the continuous development and growth of tourism institutions like New Oriental Culture and Tourism, which focus on high-quality cultural and tourism services, and even become the "leader" in the domestic tourism market, allowing more people to enjoy high-quality cultural and tourism products that match quality and price through product updates and iterations.
