Standard price for optional tour packages aimed
Businesses that specialise in serving Chinese tourists have set a standard price for optional packages to reduce scams.
Kasian Watanachaopisut, president of the Thai-Chinese Tourism Alliance Association, said 115 travel-business operators who served the bulk of inbound tourists from mainland China had agreed to use a new standard contract rate for optional packages – 600 yuan or about Bt3,000 per tourist.
The move is aimed at reducing a long-standing problem of cheating tourists, particularly from China, by forcing them to buy optional packages at extra rates. If travel companies are obliged to sell such alternative options at a standard price, it should reduce tourist complaints. Each month, the Chinese Embassy in Bangkok receives 10 such complaints on average.
Unscrupulous travel agents at point of origin lure in customers with extra-low rates, and then force them to buy the add-on packages once they arrive in Thailand.
Kasian said the association had been concerned about this problem since last year when the number of arrivals from China plunged significantly. "Eighty per cent of operators who focused on the China market have experienced losses due to fewer customers," he said.
The association believes that setting a new standard price would help put an end to this scam, making travel to the Kingdom more attractive not only to mainland Chinese but to Taiwanese, some of whom experienced similar problems years ago. Arrivals from Taiwan have been declining for five years, and in 2014, their numbers dropped by 21.7 per cent to 392,000.
Kasian fears that if the optional-package scam is not wiped out quickly, a similar decline in mainland Chinese tourists could happen.
He said the association would work with the China National Tourism Administration to tackle this problem by asking operators to use standard prices, while hotels and related business will be asked to improve service standards.
During the Chinese New Year period next month, about 600,000 Chinese tourists are expected to come to Thailand and generate revenue of Bt8 billion to Bt10 billion.
The number of Chinese tourists is expected to reach 6 million this year, bringing in Bt200 billion in revenue.
