Where to Focus Efforts
Recently, the Friendly Branch of the Yichun Municipal Market Regulation Bureau in Heilongjiang Province, based on the actual conditions of the local cultural tourism industry, focused on the three core consumer sectors of scenic spots, accommodation, and catering. They carried out a special price inspection and rectification to enforce the main responsibility of business operators and build a solid defense line for comfortable tourism consumption in the forest area.
Focusing on Accommodation for Strict Verification
Law enforcement officers concentrated on hotels, guesthouses, and family inns near scenic spots. They conducted on-site checks of front desk price lists and room fee details, comparing the listed prices at physical stores with those on online booking platforms. The key focus was on investigating violations such as arbitrarily raising prices during the peak season, adding surcharges after reservations, imposing cleaning service fees, and deducting fees disguised as penalties for late checkout. During the inspection, they adopted a door-to-door advocacy approach, explaining relevant provisions of the Price Law of the People's Republic of China to accommodation operators. They urged merchants to improve the display of room types, off-peak and peak season prices, deposit standards, and cancellation policies, and to abandon business practices like oral pricing and unclear pricing. For some guesthouses with poorly placed price tags, they guided merchants to position the price list in a visible location at the store, ensuring tourists are fully aware of all accommodation costs before check-in, thus securing the first checkpoint of the travel experience.
Monitoring Scenic Spot Locations for Comprehensive Inspection
They conducted a thorough inspection of core scenic areas, such as the Xishui Park, and surrounding shops, mobile vendors, and temporary stalls. The focus was on verifying the implementation of pricing for scenic spot tickets, sightseeing car fees, and retail items like local specialties, snacks, and beverages at scenic area shops. On one hand, they checked the implementation of announced ticket discount policies and preferential terms for special groups, strictly investigating bundled sales of amusement rides and hidden charges. On the other hand, they standardized the pricing behavior of small vendors in scenic areas, eliminating common industry issues like spontaneous pricing and "market price negotiable" practices. They guided mobile vendors to create simple price tags, ensuring one price per item and clear labeling. Relying on a grid-based inspection mechanism, they divided regulatory responsibility zones around scenic spots, implementing staggered peak inspections and afternoon random checks during peak tourist hours, maintaining regular patrols during concentrated consumption periods to safeguard the price baseline of scenic area consumption.
Delving into Catering Industry for Detailed Control
For farmhouses, forest specialty restaurants, and street-side snack shops near scenic spots, they conducted a special price supervision inspection. Law enforcement officers reviewed menus item by item for dish pricing, focusing on common issues like incomplete menu descriptions, vague pricing for meat and vegetable dishes, oral pricing for seafood and wild vegetables, and extra charges for processing after meals. The inspection shifted away from a rigid penalty-focused regulatory model, adopting a flexible supervision approach of issuing warnings, providing on-site guidance, and holding seminars. They issued price operation advisories to catering merchants, requiring that all dishes, beverages, and specialty ingredients be clearly priced on the wall, eliminating practices like using two different menus or luring customers with low prices and then raising them after the meal. Simultaneously, they checked the food ingredient procurement records and kitchen hygiene conditions of catering outlets, combining price regulation with food safety inspection, both standardizing pricing behavior and strengthening the foundation of food safety in forest area dining.
As of now, a total of over 200 tourism-related business entities have been inspected. For three businesses found to have missing price tags during the inspection, law enforcement officers ordered immediate rectification, which has now been fully completed.