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Tourism venues ready to cash in on holiday spike
Print Edition
MANY of China’s top-rated tourist attractions are raising prices in anticipation of a surge in visitor numbers during the National Holiday, according to their websites.
Tourists can expect to pay between 100 yuan (US$16.30) and 200 yuan at more than half of China’s 171 5A (the highest grade) attractions. About a dozen will charge more than 200 yuan.
China allows scenic spots to raise prices every three years after holding public hearings.
Shanghai has three top-rated attractions — the Oriental Pearl TV Tower, Shanghai Wildlife Park and the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum — but prices are not going up this year. Visitors to the first two will pay at least 100 yuan for admission while entrance to the museum is 60 yuan.
Among those raising prices are Yulong Mountain in Yunnan Province and the Danxia Mountain scenic area in Guangdong Province.
The entrance fee at Yulong Mountain went up in May from 105 yuan to 130 yuan. Admission at Danxia Mountain went up to 200 yuan from 160 yuan this month.
Zhang Wenbin, deputy general manager of the Danxia Mountain Tourism Investment and Operation Co, said it spent 150 million yuan in qualifying for 5A status and was in deficit despite financial support from the government.
A report by China News Service said it was common for scenic sites to raise entry fees before long holidays but this triggered widespread complaints from tourists who said trips were becoming more and more unaffordable.
The Shipuxia scenic area in Baoding, a city in north China’s Hebei Province, raised its ticket price from 35 yuan to 50 yuan this month and the Cangshan Mountain area in south China’s Yunnan Province added 10 yuan to its tickets in July.
The same month, Suzhou’s Zhuozheng Garden (The Humble Administrator’s Garden) raised prices to 90 yuan from 70 yuan.
In August, the Sanxia Waterfall scenic area in central China’s Hubei Province hosted a hearing to discuss plans to raise prices 98 yuan per person to 128 or 130 yuan.
Be reasonable
Liu Simin, of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’s tourism research center, said authorities should set a pricing mechanism for scenic spots based on cost and reasonable profit and should be ordered to release financial statements for review by a third party on a regular basis.
Liu said scenic spots relied too much on ticket sales and local governments should work out other solutions such as creating a tourism industry chain and developing related industries.
A rise in air ticket prices hasn’t dampened demand for travel. On some routes, the only seats left available are business and first-class, travel agencies in Shanghai said.
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