The tourism market is recovering, but traditional travel agencies are undergoing another reshuffle. Several travel agency managers told reporters that the number of tour groups departing this summer has dropped significantly compared to previous years.

Taking summer tours to East China as an example, July and August are usually a full month without rest, and the group size is generally over 40 people. However, this year, the size of a single group has generally been reduced to around 25 people, and the interval between tour guides taking on bookings has been significantly longer, sometimes allowing them to rest for a whole week.

Regulators are also accelerating the cleanup of the false prosperity in the tourism market. In the first half of this year, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism conducted a thorough investigation of travel agencies, taking measures against "shell" travel agencies and other similar entities, and legally canceling, revoking, or revoking the business licenses of more than 2,400 travel agencies.

As the market reshuffles and social media and AI-powered planning become extremely convenient, a more serious question has been brought to the forefront: When we go to an unfamiliar city, do we still need travel agencies and tour guides?

Low-price group buying is a double-edged sword.

The demand for tourism continues to grow, but the market is characterized by "increased volume but weak prices." Data from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism shows that in the first half of this year, domestic residents made 3.463 billion trips, a year-on-year increase of 5.4%; total domestic residents spent 3.21 trillion yuan on tourism, a year-on-year increase of 2%.

After getting quotes from multiple travel agencies for the same itinerary, the customer politely said, "Thank you, but we've decided to go on our own."

Xiaowen, a saleswoman at a travel agency, told Jiemian News that this has almost become the norm. In the new media environment, senior citizen tour groups still carry the majority of traditional travel agency business. This group is price-sensitive, making price the most direct competitive tool for travel agencies.

Even if a tour price drops from 3,000 yuan to 2,000 yuan, and then is further reduced to 1,000 yuan by competitors, the travel agency still needs to pay fixed costs for hotels, buses, meals, attraction tickets, and tour guides. When tour fees are insufficient to cover costs, shopping and optional excursions become the means to supplement profits.

In February of this year, when the Ministry of Culture and Tourism released its first batch of typical cases of forced consumption in the tourism market, it specifically pointed out that some forced consumption problems are spreading to outbound tour groups, low-priced senior citizen tour groups, and tour groups for insurance customers. One of these unlicensed "insurance customer tours" organized 126 tourists to Nha Trang, Vietnam, at a price of 1,580 yuan per person, and forced the tourists to make purchases during the trip.

In another batch of typical cases announced in May, a travel agency sold a "6-day Guilin tour for 199 yuan" through a social media platform, organized elderly tourists to join the tour, but arranged for the tourists to enter 7 shopping venues during the trip and collected "head fees" from the local travel agency, as well as kickbacks for shopping and optional activities.

This business model has existed for a long time, but it has not completely disappeared from the market yet.

“Some shopping tours are highly deceptive, with a huge gap between the actual value of the goods and the actual price, making them unsuitable for the long-term development of tourism enterprises. It’s simply a case of bad money driving out good; without low-priced tours, there are no tourists,” Xiaowen said. In this traditional and crude model, tour guides, as the link in the entire profit chain closest to tourists, have a more complex and helpless role.

Several tour guides interviewed told Jiemian News that some low-priced tours offer very low basic tour guide fees, and tour guides may even have to bear some of the upfront costs. With income linked to tourist shopping and optional activities, tour guides are burdened with both service provider and sales targets.

This ultimately creates a vicious cycle—travel agencies acquire customers through low prices, and low profits further reduce the costs of tour guides and services; in order to ensure their income, tour guides further damage the tourist experience.

These types of tours have lower educational requirements for tour guides and are relatively simple to lead, which is why most people don't leave. "Some people will try to join larger, more professional travel agencies, while others, lacking better resources, continue the same old routine for ten years. If they can't get any tours, they face a 50% cut in income," one tour guide said.

Where have all the good tour guides gone?

If we only look at traditional group tours, most respondents believe that there is an oversupply of tour guides. However, in some other rapidly growing markets, the situation is quite the opposite.

Chen Yu, who is based in New Zealand, has been busy with inbound tourism from China since last year. Initially, he organized tours for New Zealanders to China, but later his travel agency's business gradually expanded to include Koreans, Russians, and others. However, finding a tour guide with mature reception skills who speaks a less commonly spoken language is like "finding a partner"—it's all about luck. Professionals who speak Korean, Spanish, and Russian are especially scarce.

According to data from the National Immigration Administration, in the first half of this year, a total of 45.906 million foreigners were inspected nationwide, an increase of 20.6% year-on-year; among them, 22.914 million were inbound foreigners, an increase of 20.4% year-on-year. Visa-free entry for foreigners reached 17.815 million, an increase of 30.6% year-on-year.

"When it comes to reception capacity, some are unable to speak the language, while others do not have tour guide licenses."

Chen Yu told Jiemian News that language is the first hurdle for these tour guides. In addition, they need to be familiar with Chinese history, local culture and customs, and handle emergencies such as flight delays, lost documents, and tourists falling ill. Rote memorization is not advisable; they must have the ability to communicate flexibly with foreign guests and understand the communication habits of different countries.

Based on this, Chen Yu began encouraging translation students to actively pursue tour guide certification. "The demands on the overall professional competence of tour guides have increased in the travel agency business. We hope more capable individuals will enter the market," he said.

The same applies to domestic customized tours and boutique group tours.

Qu Tianjun, a senior tour guide at Tuniu, has been leading tours for 17 years and has witnessed the industry's transformation. He told Jiemian News that tourists are very different from those of ten years ago. Social media exposes them to a large amount of tourism content every day, and their threshold for enjoyment when visiting a new attraction has been significantly raised.

Knowing where a tourist attraction is is no longer enough to constitute a core competitive advantage. What truly creates a premium is a tour guide who not only becomes a familiar "travel companion" to the local area, providing tourists with an immersive experience, but also learns to understand the psychological needs of different guests, making the journey more intimate and welcoming.

This has created a rather contradictory situation in the tour guide market: on the one hand, ordinary tour guides feel they have no tours to lead, while on the other hand, travel agencies cannot find truly good tour guides.

Qu Tianjun now spends most of his time learning and researching, studying how to create more engaging storytelling scripts for tourist attractions, learning about little-known cultural stories, and observing which parts and narratives tourists are more interested in, adjusting his delivery accordingly. "You have to understand what's happening in the world to be able to host more tour groups and have better topics and interactions with others," he says.

He believes that tour guides need to take on multiple roles simultaneously—as guide, photographer, food connoisseur, and cultural expert—to build a good reputation. The industry is also weeding out "old-fashioned" individuals with weak overall skills and perfunctory explanations. He considers more professional service and better emotional value particularly important; what guests need most is peace of mind and to make their money worthwhile.

According to Jiemian News, travel agencies prefer to entrust important tour groups to experienced guides they have worked with for many years, rather than training completely inexperienced newcomers. If an inexperienced guide causes a service incident, the company is more likely to suffer reputational damage and compensation risks.

A deeper dilemma arises as well. Generally, it takes at least 3-5 years for a newcomer to develop into a seasoned tour guide. In the early stages of their careers, due to the limited number of tour groups and income, many newcomers struggle to navigate this period. Furthermore, tourists increasingly do not need traditional guides; a mobile phone can easily replace them.

On the other hand, training a skilled tour guide takes several years, and travel agencies also face practical concerns that lead to a lack of motivation. "Some tour guides choose to develop independently after accumulating experience, making it difficult to recoup the initial investment in training them," said a travel agency manager.

People who leave and those who stay

Five years ago, English-speaking tour guide Cindy decided to leave the tour guide industry.

After pursuing her postgraduate studies in the UK, she returned to China to become an English teacher. Recalling her past experience as a tour guide, she still acknowledges the appeal of the profession. "The biggest characteristic of this profession is its high degree of freedom," she told Jiemian News, but the other side of this freedom is a lack of job stability.

Most tour guides are freelancers, registered through industry organizations and working temporarily with different travel agencies. They take tours when there are tours available and rest when there are no tours, rarely signing fixed-term employment contracts with travel agencies. Due to the lack of stable income, Cindy eventually chose to leave and now occasionally leads tours on weekends as a part-time worker.

According to publicly available national data, as of August 2024, there were approximately 650,000 people holding valid tour guide licenses nationwide. For reference, in 2023, only 107,000 tour guides nationwide had signed labor contracts with travel agencies, accounting for only one-sixth of the licensed personnel.

Although foreign language tour guides earn more than Chinese-speaking tour guides, Cindy believes the returns are still relatively low compared to other industries. Taking Chengdu as an example, ten years ago, the daily fee for a foreign language tour guide was about 150-200 yuan; now it's about 500-600 yuan. Even with a high-intensity tour management during peak season, monthly tour income rarely exceeds 15,000 yuan.

Students majoring in tourism are also migrating en masse. Many cultural and tourism practitioners told Jiemian News that there are fewer and fewer young people in this industry. Whether it is tourism or hotels, more young people feel that the initial salary is low and the work is hard. Graduates with ordinary degrees are more inclined to engage in live streaming work that does not require exposure to the elements, while students from key universities tend to change careers.

The departure of talent does not mean that the tourism industry no longer needs people. Many foreign tour groups, private tour groups, and study tour groups are struggling to find qualified and excellent tour guides.

Some people still choose to stay in another way.

One tour guide interviewed turned to travel photography, partly out of interest, and partly because he believed that compared to waiting for travel agencies to send tour groups, photography allowed him to directly engage with customers and better meet the new needs of young people.

Another experienced tour guide said that after years of accumulation, he has formed a stable customer base. Instead of competing for tour volume, he now spends more time exploring new destinations and getting to know a city anew. The rewards in the second half of his career are "higher than people imagine."

A more common approach is for young tour guides to cultivate personal accounts and build a following, converting that traffic into personal service orders. Some tour guides even establish their own studios to find clients themselves. However, this personalized development model is not replicable for all tour guides, and the results are often mixed. "Many newcomers focus more on their own accounts and don't pay attention to protecting their guests' privacy," one experienced tour guide commented.

Due to the "dual dilemma" of changing demand and longer return cycles, this profession is undergoing an unprecedented period of painful transformation. The old growth model has faded, and new attempts have not yet been successfully scaled up.

"Back when the internet and Ctrip emerged at the end of the last century, we discussed whether travel agencies would disappear."

Zhang Chaozhi, a specially appointed professor at Fudan University and executive director of the Department of Tourism, analyzed for Jiemian News that over the years, the number of travel agencies has increased tenfold or twentyfold compared to the end of the last century. This shows that there is always demand for travel services that cater to people. However, he believes that the business model of travel agencies merely acting as intermediaries and reselling price differences has been going on for too long and is outdated.

"The cultural and tourism sector is the most important 'side dish' of the national economy. The core of travel services should be of higher quality, more creative and personalized, and better match people's emotional needs."

He further told Jiemian News that the old business model is undergoing a cleanup and restructuring. In addition to positions such as tour guides, the scope of cultural and tourism employment should be re-evaluated and should not be limited to product planning, digital communication, public management, international exchange, infrastructure manufacturing, and cultural creativity.

This year, cultural and tourism departments in many regions have been strengthening labor protection. Many areas have further tightened regulations on the staffing requirements for full-time tour guides in travel agencies, urging them to employ at least three licensed tour guides with signed labor contracts. According to regulations, travel agencies cannot rely entirely on temporary tour guides to maintain operations; they must retain at least one full-time tour guide team.

This also means that travel agencies need to rethink how to build up their talent pool and how to develop their service capabilities for the next stage.

Faced with industry reshuffling, some choose to leave, some stay in a different way, and others continue to cultivate and accumulate experience. The travel agency industry, long characterized by fragmented operations and slow transformation, is also awaiting its second spring.

(Source: Jiemian News reporter Chen Yixuan; Xiaowen, Chen Yu, and Cindy are pseudonyms at the request of the interviewees.)