Tourism price is the monetary expression of comprehensive consumption value when people leave their permanent residence for a specific purpose, and it is the sum of all kinds of commodity prices and service prices related to tourism consumption. As an integral part of the whole price system, tourism price is an important economic lever to adjust the relationship between supply and demand in the tourism market and coordinate the interests of relevant economic entities. It not only covers the six elements of food, shelter, transportation, travel, shopping and entertainment, but also covers tourist attractions, travel agencies, hotels, transportation, catering and communication industries, and runs through the production, circulation and consumption of tourist commodities. After China's entry into WTO, with the intensification of tourism competition, the contradiction between the advance of tourism development in China and the lag of tourism management system has seriously hindered the further development of tourism in China. It is of great significance to discuss the problems and policies of China's tourism price management comprehensively and deeply for realizing the leap-forward development of China's tourism industry.
First, the analysis of the current situation of China tourism price management.
Throughout the historical evolution of China's tourism price, it has generally experienced government welfare (1950 ~ 1978), plan-oriented (1979 ~199/kloc-0) and market-oriented (1998). Since the National Tourism Administration and the State Price Bureau 1993 issued the Notice on Issues Related to the Reform of International Tourism Price Management in April, China's tourism price reform has basically adapted to the transition of the economic system, and gradually established a coordination system for tourism price management at the central and local levels, enriching the content of the whole price reform and even the whole economic system reform. So as to effectively promote the rapid growth of tourism and the gradual optimization of the national economic structure, and promote and drive the sustained and rapid economic and social development of China.
(A) the establishment of an efficient tourism price management system
The goal of socialist market economic system reform is to make the market play a decisive role in resource allocation and price formation. The formation and management of tourism prices are also gradually developed and improved on the basis of constantly summing up experience and raising awareness. At present, among the various components of tourist prices, tourist transportation prices and ticket prices of major scenic spots are still subject to government pricing or government guidance prices, while the prices of tourist hotels, restaurants, entertainment, shopping and other items are set by the operators themselves, and the management focus of the price authorities will be to standardize price behavior rather than participate in specific price setting. In addition, the tourism industry authorities are actively adapting to the new situation under the market economy, transforming government functions, allowing government functional departments to manage tourism prices as "coordinators" of the interests of all parties and "defenders" of the tourism market order, so that the market can play a leading role in determining tourism prices. The change of the role of the tourism price management department and the change of the tourism price formation mechanism are the guarantee for the efficient operation of the tourism market and one of the great achievements made in the economic system reform.
(B) formed a more reasonable tourism price system.
The composition of tourism price system is various, and it is a comprehensive large-scale system. Changes in various tourism economic activities will affect the decision and adjustment of tourism prices, and whether the tourism price system is perfect will in turn affect the behavior of tourism operators and consumers, thus affecting the development of the whole tourism industry. In the past, our tourism price system was too rigid, with no hierarchy and flexibility. Often manifested as "monolithic", one price in the peak season and one price in the off-season, which restricts the development of tourism. Through the reform of the tourism price management system and the gradual decentralization of the pricing power of tourism products, all tourism operators have the right to adopt more flexible and diverse tourism prices according to the market supply and demand, enriching the variety of tourism prices, increasing their function of regulating the supply and demand relationship in the tourism market, and promoting the tourism market to a more open and prosperous new situation. For example, travel agencies offer all-inclusive, half-inclusive, small package and other prices, scenic spots offer corresponding peak season prices, off-season prices and group preferential prices according to different tourist seasons and the number of tourists, and tourist hotels offer midnight rooms, two-day and three-night weekend rooms and so on. Form a more reasonable tourism price system.
(3) Introduce the "one-vote system" for scenic spot tickets in due course.
The rapid development of tourism has driven the development and investment fever of scenic spots, made the infrastructure construction of scenic spots advance by leaps and bounds, and provided convenience for tourists to browse, but the investment fever of scenic spot construction has also brought many problems. If the management of scenic spots is chaotic, there is a phenomenon of "multiple management but no one is responsible"; The problems of arbitrary charges, excessive charges, wild speculations and fraudulent tourists are outstanding; Predatory development and construction, without paying attention to environmental protection and sustainable utilization, have greatly reduced the tourism value of some scenic spots. In order to change the chaotic situation of scenic spot management fees and ensure the sustainable development of tourist attractions, at present, most tourist attractions have introduced the "one-vote system", which clearly stipulates that "tickets for sightseeing spots are subject to the one-vote system, and if it is really necessary to set up tickets separately, it must be reported to the provincial price department for approval." The introduction of the one-vote system is conducive to clarifying and coordinating the interests of all relevant units in the scenic spot and solving the problem of arbitrary charges; Conducive to the protection of scenic resources and price stability; It is conducive to reducing the management cost of scenic spots and reducing redundant staff, which is an important measure to improve the tourism quality of scenic spots and safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of tourism consumers.
(four) the implementation of the hearing system for the formulation of ticket prices in key tourist attractions.
Ticket price hearing means that the competent department of tourist ticket price organizes relevant social parties to demonstrate the necessity and feasibility of formulating or adjusting ticket prices. The Interim Measures for Government Price Decision Hearing clearly lists tickets for major tourist attractions as commodities and services that need hearing. Holding a ticket price hearing is an important measure to realize the institutionalization, legalization and democratization of government price decision-making. For example, in June 5438+February, 2004, entrusted by the Hunan Provincial Price Bureau, the price bureau of Zhangjiajie, Hunan Province presided over a hearing on ticket price adjustment, and held a public hearing on the ticket price adjustment plan proposed by the Wulingyuan Scenic Area Administration of Zhangjiajie City. The hearing representatives are composed of consumers' representatives (including consumers' associations), business operators, NPC deputies, CPPCC members and representatives of relevant departments. They conducted extensive argumentation and analysis on the application scheme, and fully expressed their opinions and opinions. This hearing system of ticket price decision-making makes the government's price decision more open and transparent, embodies the principles of fairness and efficiency, increases the market awareness and mass concept of all participants, and coordinates the interests and positions of operators and consumers. It is a major reform of the tourism price management system.
Second, China tourism price management reform background analysis
(A) tourism price management itself has drawbacks.
(1) The competition in the tourism market is excessive, and the order of tourism prices is chaotic. China's tourism industry has developed from a high-profit industry in the early 1990s to a low-profit or even negative-profit industry at present, which shows that China's tourism industry has actually entered a situation of oversupply. This kind of disorderly vicious price reduction competition in the tourism market caused by oversupply is mainly reflected in the following aspects.
First, the ticket prices of some scenic spots (spots) are too high. According to the survey, the ticket prices of many tourist areas (spots) in China are surprisingly high. In tourist attractions with high ticket prices, tickets for so-called cultural landscapes such as "city", "capital", "window" and "museum" are on the high side, and tourists generally think that their cultural taste and cultural connotation are "not worth the price". "High pricing, high rebate", unfair competition is becoming more and more fierce. Some charge fees for "Garden in the Garden", cram some vulgar performances and low-style sightseeing projects into the park, and charge for hitchhiking. Some restaurants and entertainment places do not clearly mark their prices according to the regulations, charge high fees and provide low services, fish in troubled waters, and "wild horses" run rampant, deceiving customers at will. Second, the price of hotels and restaurants is too low. Because the relevant government departments have not strictly controlled the investment scale and structure of tourism projects, hotels and restaurants in many areas of China are in oversupply, tourism projects are repeatedly developed and constructed, and the development of travel agencies is out of control, which leads to oversupply, and operators have no choice but to implement the "high rebate" policy under the "sky-high price tag". This phenomenon mainly exists in travel agencies, hotels, restaurants, scenic spots and other homogeneous product markets. In order to gain the largest market share, many tourism enterprises blindly reduce the price of tourism products without considering profits and income, and launch vicious competition with their peers, which has caused great damage to industry coordination. In order to keep or recapture the original market, other tourism enterprises have to cut prices to participate in the competition, and so on, forming a vicious circle, which eventually leads to serious damage to their own interests, and even the simple reproduction of enterprises is difficult to maintain. Third, the vicious competition of travel agencies at low prices, and the phenomenon of "zero negative tour fees" has appeared from time to time. It is found that some business entities of individual travel agencies have adopted the low-level direct competition mode of price reduction in order to compete for tourists, and some even reward and subsidize passengers in various ways without charging. In order to cope with the low price and "zero negative tour fee" of individual operators, regular travel agencies have to meet at low prices. This vicious price reduction competition below the cost will only greatly reduce the quality of tourists' travel, make high returns popular, seriously disrupt the fair and just market competition order and worsen the tourism market environment, which runs counter to the industrial characteristics of its "sunrise industry". Fourth, the price of tourism, entertainment and shopping is extremely irregular. The investigation found that illegal business practices such as inflated pricing and high kickbacks in tourist and entertainment shopping places, price fraud such as taking kickbacks privately by tour guides, asking for tips, deceiving customers and slaughtering customers, etc., disrupted the market order and other problems were more serious. There were still price settlement problems among travel agencies, hotels, tourist units and foreign-related shops. Some designated tourist shops and casinos lure tour guides and drivers with high kickbacks, so they always arrange tourists to shop and spend their leisure time in reception; In addition, the administrative department for industry and commerce and the price department are "the sky is high and the emperor is far away", and the supervision is not strict. Therefore, some small vendors selling tourist souvenirs in scenic spots often raise their prices without authorization, completely ignoring the quality and actual value of their goods, and make huge profits from them, which leads to a serious deviation between the price of tourist products and their value, which greatly damages the interests of tourists and seriously restricts the healthy development of local tourism.
(2) The policies and regulations related to tourism price management are not sound enough. From the early stage of tourism development to the present, the state and local governments have promulgated a series of laws, regulations and rules on the tourism market and its management. Especially in recent years, the legal work of price in the whole country and all provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the Central Government has been accelerated, and a number of laws and regulations concerning the price of tourism market have been promulgated and revised one after another, which has played a role in solving tourism disputes and standardizing the tourism market to a certain extent. But at present, there are few laws and regulations directly related to the management and price of tourist hotels. For the travel agency industry, another pillar industry of tourism, although there are many relevant laws and regulations, most of them only focus on the vertical legal relationship, that is, the government's management and control of travel agencies, while there are few provisions on the business activities of travel agencies and the relationship between tourists and travel agencies, so that it is difficult for law enforcement departments to find applicable legal provisions when problems arise. The lag of tourism price management legislation reduces the effectiveness of cracking down on tourism price violations, and forms institutional constraints on the healthy development and legal management of tourism, which should be vigorously promoted and built.
(3) Violations of laws and regulations related to tourism prices have not been cracked down accordingly. Due to the serious absence of tourism price management, the imperfect laws and regulations system of tourism price supervision, the government functional departments have failed to crack down on the illegal acts of tourism price management, and the behavior of tourism operators can not be effectively controlled within the scope permitted by existing laws and regulations, resulting in "bad business expelling good business", which leads to the chaos of tourism market price in China, the behavior of some tourism operators is extremely irregular, and a large number of violations of tourism price-related laws and regulations emerge one after another, seriously disrupting the normal order of the tourism market. For example, some tourist attractions change tickets at will, compulsory insurance, and compulsory payment of forest fire prevention fees; In the peak season of tourism, the service quality of tourism enterprises has not increased with the increase of tourism prices, and acts such as overcharging service fees and cheating customers have occurred from time to time; Tour guides have become "shopping guides" and "food guides", and it is not uncommon to buy and sell hard and get high kickbacks. Some businesses violate the rules of clearly marked prices, violate the principle of good faith, and make false advertisements to mislead tourists. It can be considered that this chaotic situation is not only caused by lax supervision and ineffective crackdown by government functional departments, but also shows that the self-discipline of China's tourism industry is still too weak and the quality of employees is not high.
If the malpractice of tourism price management in China is not handled properly, it will bring very serious consequences and endanger the healthy, rapid and sustainable development of China's tourism industry. First of all, it will seriously affect the overall economic benefits of the tourism service industry, reduce the efficiency of earning foreign exchange through tourism, increase the difficulty of earning foreign exchange, and cause serious foreign exchange losses. Secondly, this excessive price reduction competition also worsens the tourism market environment, causing consumers to be confused about the price and quality of tourism services, causing the unreasonable price structure of tourism exports, making it difficult for tourism enterprises engaged in tourism reception and hotel management to produce and operate, and not accumulating enough to further enrich and improve various tourism facilities and improve the service level and quality of the whole industry. Finally, the chaotic price of tourism also makes tourists' evaluation of China's image decline, which will have a bad advertising effect, reduce potential customers and repeat customers, and will seriously damage the development of tourism in China in the long run.
(B) the impact of China's accession to the WTO on China's tourism price management
Tourism is an industry with relatively loose market access and fewer barriers. Therefore, it is more open to the outside world than other industries. After more than 20 years of development, China's tourism industry has a considerable industrial scale and certain ability to participate in international market competition. The author thinks that although China's entry into WTO has a positive impact on the overall management of tourism prices in China, it will also challenge the tourism management system in China. On the one hand, it will aggravate the complexity of tourism management in China. Although China's entry into WTO will bring many opportunities to the development of China's tourism industry, the entry of international tourism capital and large foreign tourism companies will accelerate the major adjustment and reshuffle of domestic tourism industry, and most small and medium-sized domestic tourism companies will face the danger of reorganization and bankruptcy. According to China's WTO commitment, China travel agency industry will gradually relax the restrictions on the proportion of foreign investment in joint venture travel agencies, allowing foreign investors to hold shares in joint venture travel agencies before the end of 2003, and allowing the establishment of wholly foreign-owned travel agencies before the end of 2005. With the all-round opening to the outside world, the business entities of tourism will be increasingly diversified, which will increase the difficulty of tourism management in China and bring new challenges to tourism management; On the other hand, the current tourism management system is also difficult to adapt to the requirements of the new situation. China is a developing country that is establishing a socialist market economy system, and institutional factors have an important impact on the development of tourism. China's tourism industry has adopted a government-led development strategy. Up to now, a two-level management system has been established and implemented in accordance with the spirit of 198 1 Decision of the State Council on Strengthening Tourism Work and the principle of "unified leadership and hierarchical management". It is this typical departmental management system that has caused many internal contradictions in the tourism industry and chaos in the tourism market. At present, due to the lack of macro-control power and means, it is difficult for tourism administrative departments to implement all-round industry management, which makes the contradiction between economic base and superstructure increasingly prominent. In addition, the original domestic tourism market order is not standardized, and tourism laws and regulations are not perfect. With the intensification of competition after China's entry into WTO, the contradiction between the advance of tourism development and the lag of tourism management system, especially the tourism price management system, has seriously hindered the further development of tourism in China.
Third, improve China's tourism price management policy options
The 16th National Congress of the Communist Party of China proposed to establish a "unified, open, competitive and orderly" market economic system. Price competition is an important means of market competition, and the price behavior of the market needs to be standardized, unified, open and orderly. Therefore, in order to meet the requirements of developing the socialist market economy, in the long run, tourism price management must relax government control, insist on standardizing tourism price behavior, give full play to the role of tourism price in rational allocation of tourism resources, guide operators to conduct open, fair and just competition by means of price, protect the legitimate rights and interests of tourists and operators, and thus give full play to the role of market mechanism and law of value to promote the healthy development of tourism.
(a) establish and improve the rules and regulations of tourism price management.
With the establishment of market economy and the transformation of government functions, administrative orders can no longer be the main means for the government to manage the economy. Specific to the management of tourism price, the price function department is required to find out the problems and loopholes in the current tourism market price through in-depth investigation of the tourism market, formulate rules and regulations that are in line with the development of tourism and can solve practical problems, and provide institutional and environmental support for the development of tourism. First, the implementation of tourism standardization project, through the formulation of national or industry standard tourism contract text, instead of travel contracts made by travel agencies, in order to protect the legitimate rights and interests of vulnerable groups in tourism activities-tourists, and at the same time provide a basis for handling possible tourism price disputes in the future. The second is to establish a multi-faceted coordination mechanism between the central and local governments, that is, the National Tourism Administration and the State Price Bureau and other relevant ministries and bureaus coordinate the adjustment range and introduction time of domestic tourism prices and charging standards; The provincial tourism bureau and the price bureau negotiate the price adjustment range and introduction time of relevant tourism prices and charging standards in the region; At the same time, we should also take the initiative to unite departments closely related to tourism, such as transportation, municipal administration, culture, gardens, forestry, water conservancy and cultural relics. By establishing an effective departmental joint meeting system, give full play to the enthusiasm of all parties and form a comprehensive tourism price management ability. Third, build a framework of laws and regulations on tourism prices with local characteristics.
On the one hand, according to the existing national laws and regulations, we should boldly explore and formulate local regulations and government regulations that are compatible with tourism prices; On the other hand, replace economic regulation with legal regulation, control unfair competition in tourism according to law, strengthen joint law enforcement, and maintain a good order in the tourism market according to law. Fourth, enhance the transparency of tourism market information and guide the rational flow of tourists. The central and provincial price departments should always pay attention to the price dynamics of the tourism market, do a good job in the prediction of tourism prices and charging standards, and make an appropriate prediction of the market price for the next year according to the market supply and demand situation and the current price level. At the same time, strengthen contact with tourism-related departments, industry associations and enterprises, carry out consultation and dialogue around the prominent contradiction of tourism prices, guide and standardize the competition in the tourism market, and adjust the relationship between supply and demand.
(2) Actively transform government functions and give full play to the regulatory role of price leverage.
There are two different views on how to manage tourism prices after China's entry into WTO. One view is that most tourism prices should be set by the government; Another view advocates the full liberalization of tourism prices. The author believes that people who hold the former view are obviously the reflection of the way of thinking formed under the planned economy and do not meet the requirements of establishing a socialist market economy; Those who hold the latter view seem to meet the requirements of market economy development on the surface, but in fact they violate the price law and do not meet the reality of China's current tourism market. It can be imagined that under the condition of socialist market economy, it will be an inevitable trend for tourism to embark on the road of market development, and the government will gradually withdraw from the tourism market, allowing the market mechanism to play a fundamental role in resource allocation and price formation. However, this kind of government withdrawal can only be the transformation of government functions and the way to standardize the market, because a large number of facts show that the market is not perfect, and it is impossible to achieve high efficiency in the tourism market competition without the appropriate intervention of government departments. Especially in the early stage of the current development of tourism marketization, after the basic liberalization of tourism prices, there have been a lot of irregular price behaviors in the market, such as serious price fraud, chaotic price order, various disorderly price increases and arbitrary charges, and disorderly and vicious competition in the tourism market. Therefore, the tourism price management department must improve the comprehensiveness and authority of tourism price management, make full use of price leverage to develop tourism resources and tourism industry, strengthen and improve tourism price management, establish and improve macro-price control mechanism, improve price formation mechanism, standardize and guide the price competition behavior in the tourism market, and realize the efficient and stable operation of tourism.
(3) Vigorously strengthen the supervision and inspection of tourism price law enforcement.
We must make great efforts to rectify the phenomenon of illegal prices and cheating customers in the tourism market. Tourism administrative departments at all levels should not only be "referees" for price supervision and inspection, but also be "referees" for price adjustment and arbitration, and do a good job in law enforcement supervision and inspection of tourism prices and evaluation of government price policies and regulations and government pricing behavior. The first is to improve the comprehensive management mechanism of the tourism market. Tourism administrative departments at all levels should continue to deepen the working mechanism of government-led and departmental linkage, actively strive for the leadership of local party committees and governments in regulating the order of the tourism market, strengthen coordination and cooperation with public security, transportation, industry and commerce, supervision, quality inspection and other departments, increase the comprehensive management of the tourism market, regularly clean up and rectify the price order of the tourism market, and solve the problems that the tourism industry has laws to follow, such as the Anti-Unfair Competition Law, the Price Law and the Stop profiteering Law. The second is to establish a system of accountability for misjudged cases in administrative law enforcement of tourism prices. In order to further strengthen the administrative law enforcement management of tourism prices, ensure serious law enforcement, improve the quality of handling cases, safeguard national interests, and protect the legitimate rights and interests of citizens, legal persons and other organizations, it is necessary to formulate measures for investigating the responsibility of misjudged cases in tourism price supervision and inspection. The third is to solve the problem that the relative person of the "referee" consciously abides by the law and acts according to law. That is, by hiring tourism service quality supervisors, strengthening the administrative law enforcement inspection of the implementation of price laws and regulations, a strong tourism administrative law enforcement supervision system and tourism service quality supervision network will be formed, thus putting industry management behavior and tourism law enforcement behavior under effective supervision. In the inspection of administrative law enforcement, it is necessary not only to check the price administration and management of price by the competent price department and price staff, but also to check the knowledge and compliance of price management personnel at all levels of government, relevant departments and operators, so as to improve the legal level of social price.
(D) Improve the price self-discipline function of tourism industry associations.
International experience shows that tourism price management should give full play to the role of trade organizations and strengthen the price self-discipline function of trade associations. Therefore, as a bridge between tourism administrative departments and tourism enterprises and an intermediary tool between government macro-management and enterprise micro-operation, once tourism industry associations find that enterprises have low-price dumping or price monopoly, they should discourage them from safeguarding the overall interests of enterprises in their own industries and report to relevant government departments for investigation. For the phenomenon that the market is flooded with fake and shoddy products due to excessive price competition, tourism industry associations should actively cooperate with relevant government departments to formulate economic and technical standards, product quality and performance standards, and organize and supervise enterprises to strictly implement them, and cooperate with relevant government departments and political and legal departments to resolutely crack down on bad behaviors of shoddy goods, fake ones to achieve the purpose of price reduction and reduce technical, quality and performance standards.
While perfecting the self-discipline function of the organization price of tourism industry associations, it should also stipulate in local tourism legislation that tourism enterprises must join industry associations, shift the management of quality deposits from the government to associations, and reduce the amount of deposits to increase incentives; The government will promote the tourism association to become one of the main management institutions of the tourism industry, rather than membership fees and operating expenses. In this case, because most of the contents of government supervision (such as the business license of tourism, star rating of hotel catering enterprises, etc. ) has been undertaken by trade associations, which will undoubtedly effectively promote the functional role of tourism industry associations in self-discipline, coordination and supervision, and promote the long-term development of tourism.
(5) Strengthen the training of tourism price management practitioners and establish the concept of global tourism price management.
Tourism is a labor-intensive and knowledge-intensive service industry, and tourism human resources are the most important capital of tourism enterprises. After death, tourism enterprises need the support of new tourism management human resources, and retaining talents is more important for tourism enterprises to survive and develop better in the fiercely competitive market. The author thinks that whether the goal of China's tourism development by leaps and bounds can be achieved mainly depends on the quantity and quality of tourism talents; To do a good job in tourism price management in the new era, we must pay close attention to building the commanding heights of tourism management talents and strive to cultivate a team of high-quality tourism professionals with the concept of global tourism price management. Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen the training of tourism price management practitioners. The local tourism price authorities should, according to the local actual situation, combine the national policy and the central task of price management in the tourism industry, adopt vocational education, graded training, transportation for further study at home and abroad and other training methods for tourism price management practitioners, and continuously improve their political and professional quality and strengthen professional ethics and discipline education through innovative training in concepts, methods, contents and management. And give full play to the leading role of middle and senior tourism price management practitioners, so as to quickly improve the level of tourism price management and service quality and set an example for China's tourism industry.