The First Online Travel Regulation Is Issued, Big Data Is Included In The Regulation

On September 1, the Ministry of culture and tourism issued the "Interim Provisions on the management of online tourism business services" (hereinafter referred to as the "provisions"), which will be formally implemented from October 1, 2020. This is the first regulation focusing on the online tourism market in China.

"The promulgation of the regulations is just in time." In an interview with the 21st century economic reporter, meituan tourism related person in charge said that for online tourism enterprises, this is a new trend that can not be ignored. At the same time, it also shows that the "compliance and high quality development" of online tourism market is an irreversible trend.

The regulation defines the scope of application and relevant subjects, and puts the hot issues such as unreasonable low-cost tourism, the protection of evaluation rights, and the use of tourists' information. Does this mean that the online tourism consumption environment will be further standardized, and the online tourism industry may usher in a new stage of development?

"The regulation is a golden line for the development of the industry, which makes the industry more standardized and more directional," Feng Rao, the director of mafengwo Tourism Research Center, affirmed the promulgation of the regulation, "clarifying the platform responsibilities of online tourism enterprises, which is conducive to the long-term sustainable development of online tourism industry."

In the future, tourism products and services will become more and more concentrated. Visual China

Draw a red line

1999 is known as the first year of China's online tourism development. A large number of online tourism companies have been established since that year. After more than 20 years of development, China's online tourism market has grown rapidly, and the number of online tourism enterprises and platforms has been increasing. According to the data report of China's online tourism market in 2019, the number of online tourism users in China reached 413 million in 2019, a year-on-year increase of 5.36%, and the scale of online tourism market reached 1005.9 billion yuan, breaking through trillion yuan for the first time.

With the rapid growth of the market, online tourism market chaos. Due to the characteristics of tourism products and services, such as asynchrony with transaction and consumption in different places, as well as the virtuality of online transaction and the persistent problems of tourism market itself, all kinds of problems of online tourism transaction occur frequently.

According to the user rights protection case database of e-commerce consumer dispute mediation platform, online tourism (OTA) has become a disaster area for complaints after the end of each tourism consumption season. The problems focus on 10 aspects, such as default tying, overbearing terms, big data, order return and change, information leakage, false publicity, low price trap, price increase or no ticket after placing an order, order error, travel accident compensation, etc 。 In this context, it has become a social consensus to strengthen the supervision of online tourism market and regulate the market order.

But the ambiguity of responsibility boundary increases the difficulty of supervision. Liu Simin, director of the Tourism Research Institute of Beijing Foreign Studies University, said in an interview with the 21st century economic report that in the past, the state's management of traditional tourism was relatively light, and online tourism came into being along with the Internet, which is more complicated than the supervision of traditional tourism industry. "The regulation of online tourism industry involves all aspects, and it is always a problem who will manage and how to manage it. At present, the brigade has taken a step forward. "

The reporter noted that the "Regulations" put forward more specific provisions for the industry characteristics and actual situation of online tourism, and responded to social hot issues such as false booking, unreasonable low-cost travel, price discrimination (big data kill), credit supervision and other social hot issues.

For example, in 2018 and 2019, a number of consumers complained that online tourism platforms such as Ctrip, Feizhu and other online tourism platforms frequently encountered "big data killing" and platform bill brushing. Article 15 of the regulation clearly states that "online tourism operators shall not abuse big data analysis and other technical means to set unfair trading conditions based on tourism consumption records and tourism preferences And infringe upon the legitimate rights and interests of tourists.

"Science and technology and innovation should be used as the means for online tourism enterprises to improve service quality and industrial efficiency," said Feng Rao. Online tourism enterprises should protect the rights and interests of consumers through their own technological development and industrial deepening, so as to make tourism consumption safer and more convenient.

"This is good for tourism enterprises, not pressure." The relevant person in charge of meituan tourism thinks that the regulation puts forward the solution to the problem existing in the online tourism market and imposes more strict constraints on the online tourism market. For example, it clearly regulates hot issues such as unreasonable low-cost tourism, which will play a positive role in the protection of the rights and interests of online tourism consumers and the development of the industry.

Focus on hot spots and respond to expectations

The regulatory role of the regulation for market operation has reached a consensus in the industry. Feng Rao told reporters that in the tourism market competition, the behavior of "unreasonable low price travel" and "big data killing" used to infringe on the legitimate rights and interests of consumers by using industry information barriers, and also caused a huge impact on the market competition order. Nowadays, bringing the accumulated disadvantages of these industries into legal supervision has far-reaching significance for the high-quality development of tourism industry, providing more market space for tourism products with good quality and good service, and protecting the consumer rights and interests of tourists.

Cheng chaogong, the chief researcher of Tongcheng Research Institute, believes that the regulation has for the first time defined some requirements and initiatives in the form of regulations, and refined some policy requirements, which is more convenient for the industry to comply with and implement. "This will play a positive role in maintaining a good market order and creating a good online tourism service consumption environment, and a standardized market will be more conducive to the development and growth of China's online tourism industry."

A more standardized and high-quality online tourism market has become the common expectation of the society. It is worth noting that the online tourism market is accelerating recovery under the normalization of epidemic prevention and control. Cheng chaogong believes that in the long run, the epidemic situation is not only a crisis for the online tourism industry, but also contains opportunities. Among them, the most noteworthy is the "great acceleration" of the informatization of tourism industry chain and the development of online consumption. During the epidemic period, non-contact services and online booking have become rigid demands in the field of tourism consumption, thus providing new opportunities for online tourism platforms with big data and information technology accumulation.

In addition, Liu Simin, a tourism expert, also reminded that in the future, the market concentration of online tourism industry will be higher and higher, which will become the main channel for the sales of tourism products and services. In addition to "consumer compensation", we need to increase the cost of legislation and improve the level of compensation.