New rules say no to compulsory shopping

China National Tourism Administration has published the new rules to regulate the travel agencies: The travel agency that makes bold to change the itinerary will be fined up to 500,000 CNY. The travel agency will face a fine up to 30,000 CNY and forfeit the illegal earnings for revealing the tourists' personal information.

The definition of changing itinerary in the new rules is as the followings: Skip the visit items of the itinerary or shorten the visit time, add or modify tour items, increase the number of shopping times or extend shopping time length and some other behaviors of changing the tour contract without tourists' permission. Still the new rules state that travel agency can not force tourists to attend shopping activities and pay for the extra tour items, as well as the case that proposes different contract items between tourists of the same tour group. The travel agency breaching these rules will be fined up to 10,000 CNY.

Before the new rules carried out, in order to survive in the fierce competition and make stable income, travel agency planed some tour packages called "minus tour group" and sold these groups to local tour guides who would earn the income by ripping off the tourists by many ways during the tour. The travel agency breaking the rules will be fined from 20,000 to 100,000 CNY.

The new rules also mentions: Transportation, accommodation, restaurant, scenic spots and all the tourist related enterprises arranged by travel agency should be qualified to receive tour groups, otherwise travel agency will be fined 30,000 CNY and confiscated transgress earnings. Travel agency that illegally reveals tourists' information and has not kept well the tour contracts and relative documents, data or information and the retention time of this material that is less than 2 years will be confiscated transgress earnings together with a fine 3 times as much as transgress earnings, or will be fined up to 10,000 CNY if there is no transgress earnings.