China Announces Changes to Travel Laws

China this week released the long awaited new regulations for the travel industry to protect the rights of Chinese travel consumers against shopping tours and ensuring their safety when traveling.

In the ten years that the Chinese outbound travel industry has been developing, this is the first real effort to tighten up what have long been illegitimate practices harming the reputation of the Chinese travel industry. The announcement comes as the ongoing practices have increased over recent years within the Chinese travel industry, both domestically and outbound.

Premier Wen Jiabao by Order of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China announced the important sweeping changes which are welcome news for Chinese travel consumers. This recent decree is also very good news for destinations and tourism operators globally that have been investing heavily in the Chinese travel market in recent years.

Among the 36 articles announced, some of the key changes relate to ensuring complete transparency to consumers prior to purchasing and also to remaining legitimate whilst on tour. New regulations have given special attention to addressing the Chinese travel industry’s long standing reputation of being heavily commissioned shopping tours in order to market and sell below cost tours. The new rules stipulate that no tour can be sold below cost and there is to be no coercing travelers to go shopping or participate in tour items that need extra payment.

These changes are now being rolled out across China and it is expected that the travel industry will be policed in an effort to ensure the rights of traveling Chinese are protected.

According to the statistics from National Bureau of Statistics of China, by the end of year 2008 there were over 45.8 million of Chinese tourists to travel abroad, a remarkable 11.9 percent increase since year 2007. World Tourism Organization predicts it is set to reach a staggering 100 million per year by 2020.