Cross-provincial tours costing only tens of yuan or even "zero-fee" are low-priced tours that attract tourists with the gimmick of "pure play" and "no shopping." These tours use live streaming, short videos, and social media platforms to lure tourists, only to turn into shopping tours or optional excursions upon arrival at the destination. This summer, the problem of unreasonably low-priced tours has once again drawn attention. On the surface, it's the old problem of attracting customers with low prices and forcing them to shop; at a deeper level, it's a profit chain of "online low-price lead generation—offline multi-layered group transfers—profiting from shopping rebates."

In the current context of expanding domestic demand and boosting consumption, maintaining a sound tourism market order is of great significance for improving the consumer experience, unleashing consumption potential, and promoting the high-quality development of the tourism industry. For consumers, abnormally low prices often mean reduced services and increased hidden costs, damaging the tourism experience and consumer confidence. For businesses, unreasonably low-priced tours can easily cause honest operators to lose their competitive advantage, resulting in "bad money driving out good." For tourist destinations, while individual operators may gain short-term profits, they are eroding the market reputation of the entire region. For the market, allowing unreasonably low prices to become a means of attracting traffic can easily force other operators to follow suit with price reductions and service cuts, leading to a vicious cycle of "involution" competition. Addressing the chaos of unreasonably low-priced tours is not only necessary to protect tourists' rights but also an important measure to rectify "involution" competition in the tourism market and maintain a fair competitive order.

In recent years, relevant departments have continuously intensified their efforts to address unreasonably low-priced tours, expanding the scope of rectification from traditional shopping tours to include low-priced senior citizen tours and illegal online solicitation. Supervision has also shifted from primarily inspecting travel agencies and tour guides to a multi-departmental, integrated online and offline approach. However, unreasonably low-priced tours remain persistent and recurring, stemming from a relatively complete closed-loop system of vested interests. Punishing individual travel agencies or tour guides is unlikely to fundamentally solve the problem.

Some low-priced tours are resold through multiple layers of intermediaries, including tour operators, local travel agencies, and tour guides. The initial stage uses unusually low prices to attract customers, then transfers them downstream through methods like "per capita fees," while the final stage profits from shopping rebates and optional excursions. With the rapid development of live streaming and short videos, this chain has extended from offline to online, with some organizations and individuals attracting customers online and then reselling those customers. To address this persistent problem, the underlying profit chain must be severed.

Closely monitor unusually low prices as a means of attracting tourists. While tourism products are seasonal and promotional, the costs of transportation, accommodation, and catering are relatively monitorable. Employing big data and artificial intelligence, we should strengthen the monitoring and early warning of unusually low prices through key channels such as live streaming, short videos, and online platforms. Businesses that consistently attract tourists with prices significantly deviating from reasonable ranges should be promptly investigated and dealt with.

Regulate the "transfer" of customer sources. Strengthen the responsibility of platforms to verify the qualifications of operators, tourism products, and promotional content, focusing on whether promises such as "pure tour," "no shopping," and "no extra fees" are consistent with actual performance. Promptly remove products and restrict postings from operators who repeatedly violate regulations to prevent online platforms from becoming new channels for acquiring and reselling customers at low prices.

Strictly investigate the "profit-making ends" of shopping rebates. Strengthen penetrating supervision of tour operators, local travel agencies, tour guides, and shopping venues, focusing on the flow of tourists, contracts, and funds, with a particular emphasis on investigating "headcount fees" and shopping rebates. Enhance collaboration among departments such as culture and tourism, market supervision, public security, and cyberspace administration, as well as cooperation between tourist source areas and destinations, to shift supervision from investigating a single entity to investigating an entire chain.

Ultimately, competition in the tourism market boils down to competition between products and services. Severing the profit chains behind unreasonably low-priced tours means making illegal operations unprofitable and fostering a market for honest businesses, thus driving the tourism market back to quality-driven competition. Only by creating a more standardized and orderly market environment to enhance the tourism consumption experience can we further unleash the potential of tourism consumption and add momentum to expanding domestic demand and boosting overall consumption. (Source: Economic Daily)