The Legal Aspects of “Zero-Fare” Tour in Shopping Tourism: A Case of Chinese Visitors in Hong Kong

Abstract

The governments of China and Hong Kong have adopted different legal approaches to tackle “zero-fare” tours in shopping tourism. This paper describes, analyzes, and evaluates the legal aspects of the two approaches. It is found that the Chinese government chooses to address the issue by enacting the Tourism Law with specific articles targeting “zero-fare” tours; whereas the Hong Kong government is taking over the regulatory role of travel agencies by setting a high threshold instead of dealing with “zero-fare” tours specifically. The Chinese Tourism Law has created some short-lived impacts in the first year but a longer-term impact is yet to be seen. While the legislative process in Hong Kong is still going on, the industry practice in “zero-fare” tour operations has further evolved, thus there is a risk of making the legislation less relevant. While this is a case study about Hong Kong, it expounds on a real issue which has relevance beyond Hong Kong and the People’s Republic of China, particularly to destinations that have an interest in receiving more Chinese visitors.

中华人民共和国和香港特区政府各自采取不同的方法来处理“零团费”旅行团。本文介绍﹑分析和评估两种方法的法律问题。研究发现，中国政府选择通过制订旅游法与针对“零团费”旅行团的具体条款来处理；香港政府则正在接管旅行社的监管角色，并通过设置高门槛来处理。在中国旅游法实施的第一年，短期成效已见，但其长远影响仍有待观察。香港的立法程序仍在继续，但由于“零团费”旅游业务的衍变，因此存在令立法不太相关的风险。本研究亦提出了其他想获得更多中国游客的旅游目的地需要关注的问题。

KEYWORDS:

• China outbound tourism
• shopping and retailing in tourism
• tourism planning and management
• tourism policy
• socio-cultural aspects of tourism

关键词：:

• 中国出境旅游
• 旅游购物及零售
• 旅游规划与管理
• 旅游政策
• 旅游的社会文化层面

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tony S. M. Tse

Tony S. M. Tse is an Assistant Professor and Programme Director (Industry Partnerships) in the School of Hotel and Tourism Management at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong SAR, China (E-mail: [email protected]).

Quinton K. T. Tse

Quinton K. T. Tse is an undergraduate student in the Faculty of Law at the University of Technology, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia (E-mail: [email protected]).