Ticket price rises reduce appeal of scenic spots

The just-concluded weeklong National Day holiday proved once again to be a tourism feast for vacationing Chinese, but many expressed anger at the considerable rise in entry fees to many domestic scenic spots and questioned the legitimacy of such price hikes, which has raised concerns about the sustainability of the country's booming but fledging tourism sector.

According to a recent report published by the Tourism Research Center under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the average price for admission to nearly 200 top-grade scenic sites nationwide is more than 100 yuan ($16.3) after several rounds of price rises in recent years. Yulong Snow Mountain in Yunnan province, for example, raised its ticket price in May from 105 yuan to 130 yuan, and Danxia Mountain in Guangdong province raised its ticket price to 200 yuan on Sept 1, from the former 160 yuan in low seasons and 180 yuan in peak seasons.

It is reported that the gross profit for some scenic sites exceeds 60 percent, even higher than that of the real estate market.

At a time when Chinese people are not that rich, the high price of admission to tourist spots will inevitably cut short their spending on services related to tourism and this will have a negative knock-on effect on the development of the domestic tourism market. Data from the China National Tourism Administration indicates that each Chinese spent an average 806 yuan on tourism in 2013, while tickets accounted for nearly 14 percent of the travel expenditure. For rural residents, a single entry ticket even could cost more than 20 percent of their travel expenses in a year.

It is reasonable for tourist spots to moderately raise their ticket prices to support their sustainable development in the context of ever-rising labor and management costs, but any price rise should not violate relevant national regulations, and should also take into consideration the burden on ordinary people.

In 2007, the National Development and Reform Commission, China's top economic planner, issued a regulation, stipulating that scenic spots could adjust their ticket prices once every three years, but it failed to set the upper limits or demand public hearings to be held to decide the extent of price adjustments. Despite its original purpose of preventing scenic sites from willfully raising their ticket prices, the regulation seems simply to have prompted some to do so every three years.

Given the fact that the development of most domestic tourist spots is based on natural or public resources, which in essence belong to everyone in the country, the cost of admission should not be determined by their management companies alone. Transparent public hearings should be held to better reflect their public nature.

The country's price law also stipulates that the prices of a small number of commodities that are vital for the development of the national economy and the quality of people's lives, if necessary, should be decided by the government or be under government guidance, and the pricing of a majority of domestic scenic spots that are built on public resources obviously falls into this category. It has so far remained unknown whether the widespread move taken by tourist sites nationwide in recent years to raise their prices has been conducted by relevant local governments or got their authorization.

A rise in ticket prices has proved not the only method to raise their revenues or profits. As a matter of fact, Chinese Internet users have expressed their dissatisfaction toward the considerable price rises by some domestic scenic spots in recent years, even calling for a boycott of unreasonably expensive spots.

For their sustainable development, domestic scenic spots should take multiple measures to increase their revenues, such as boosting or upgrading services related with tourism, other than depend on the lifting of ticket prices mainly.

The author is a senior writer with China Daily. wuyixue@chinadaily.com.cn