Recently, forced shopping by tour guides reappeared in Yunnan. According to surging news reports, tourist Liu Min (not his real name) and friends signed up for a 6-day and 5-night tour group in Yunnan. Before joining the group, she asked the staff whether the tour group needed shopping. The staff responded that the group was not a shopping group. However, in the process of traveling, the tour guides threaten tourists: they know their ID card number and home address, and if they do not go shopping, they will recover the travel fee difference. It also divides the shopping consumption level for tourists: the working class must spend 3000 to 8000 yuan, and the white-collar class must spend 8000 to 20000 yuan.
Compulsory shopping is not new, but it has been repeatedly prohibited. In June 2018, also in Jinghong, Yunnan, a tour guide insulted and threatened tourists to shop all the way. When the video was exposed, he was investigated for the crime of forced trading, sentenced to six months' imprisonment and fined 2000 yuan, becoming a typical case of punishing black tour guides for forced trading. Mercenary guides and businessmen can say anything. The same is true of the black tour guide who was exposed this time. Compared with the female tour guide who was sentenced to prison, she was sarcastic, threatening and intimidating. In response to the crisis of public opinion, relevant departments of the Department of Culture and Tourism of Yunnan Province responded that they were currently investigating and collecting evidence, and would deal with it once verified.
In fact, the phenomenon of forced buying and forced selling is not unique to a certain place. It can be said that it is one of the persistent diseases of tourism. On this issue, the tour guides concerned should bear the primary responsibility. The painful experience of "butchering" and "forced consumption" exposed one after another has led to a crisis of trust in the tourism industry in some places. You should know that a bad comment may cause billions of losses. Those "black sheep" among tour guides who repeat the routine of forced shopping for their own interests and damage the overall interests of the tourism industry should be condemned by the tourism practitioners.
In addition, the reputation management of tourist destinations should not only focus on the post crisis, but also on the pre crisis. First of all, we should turn post-processing into prior supervision, so as to truly protect the rights and interests of tourists. Especially when the tourism industry recovers, we should fight against persistent diseases with great efforts to prevent the tourism industry from falling down again. At the same time, for such incidents, the competent department should not deal with them together, but solve the problem fundamentally. If it is just a headache and a foot pain, and no cure is found for the root cause, the persistent tourism disease of forced shopping will only continue to block tourists.
Going further, the "low price group" has been exposed and dealt with many times. Both the media and the tourism authorities are promoting it, repeatedly reminding tourists not to be greedy for cheap prices and falling into the "low price group" routine. But in reality, the evil doers keep their routine, and tourists are constantly attracted. The reason for this is not so much the persistent problems of the tourism industry of forced buying and forced selling, but rather the fact that many tourism operators rely too heavily on the path of low price competition and the return of commission as the main profit channel.
Tourism is actually a highly market-oriented industry. After experiencing the test of the epidemic, tourism practitioners are trying to find a way to survive and save themselves. The operation and management mode of the tourism industry, the consumption habits and psychology of tourists have all gone through a process of remodeling and upgrading, but this upgrading is not a disguised way for practitioners to "refine and deepen" the forced consumption, "low-cost group" and other business models.
The changes in tourists' consumption psychology, consumption demand and the survival and self-help actions of the tourism industry are forcing the tourism industry to actively adapt to new challenges. Tourism is not only a tourist industry, but also a huge cultural industry. Tourism can neither be bought or sold by force, nor can it simply rely on mountains and water to enjoy food from the cultural heritage of the ancestors. What is the way out?
Culture is the soul of tourism development, and tourism is the carrier of cultural transmission. We should give full play to the intelligence and rich imagination of modern people, expand cultural and creative industries, constantly improve the quality of the tourism industry, broaden the development path of the tourism industry, promote the transformation of the development mode of the tourism industry, realize the transformation of the tourism industry from quantitative to qualitative, and stick to the path of sustainable development. In a word, turning tourism into a business under the sun can truly turn green waters and green mountains into golden mountains and silver mountains.
