Beijing targets one-day trips with draft regulation

A draft tourism regulation that aims to better govern one-day trips in Beijing was submitted to the city's legislature on Wednesday for its first reading.

Under the regulation, all travel agencies are required to register with the administrative tourism authorities and provide outlines of all the one-day trips they are proposing to run.

Customers should be provided with advance e-itineraries and no travel agency is allowed to publicly advertise one-day trips without approval, according to the draft.

Anyone found to contravene the regulation would be disciplined by the city's tourism administration and issued a maximum fine of 10,000 yuan ($1,495), it said.

Liu Zhengang, director of the municipal government's legal affairs department, said the draft prioritizes regulation of one-day trips because such tours have become a serious problem in Beijing and given the capital a negative image.

"As the political and cultural center of China, Beijing needs to make full use of its cultural resources for the development of tourism, and establish a good tourism image across the country," said legislator Cheng Xiaojun, adding that the draft also affects online travel agencies' search engine services and tour businesses.

By the end of last year, Beijing had 1,602 travel agencies and more than 39,000 tour guides, the government said.

It added that tourism brought profits of more than 460 billion yuan to the city last year.