Southern Metropolis Daily reporter learned that recently, in order to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of consumers and create a good consumption environment, the Guangdong Provincial Consumer Council organized a survey on the pre cancellation rules of online tourism platform hotels. Through collecting, summarizing, comparing and analyzing the service agreements, terms and regulations, hotel information display and other content provided by the platform, the pre cancellation system and rules of platform hotels were understood and mastered. It was found that over 40% of hotels have all or some room types that are "non cancellable" or "free to cancel within 15/30 minutes", and there are many hotels that implement "non cancellable" policies, mainly concentrated in mid to high end hotels.
It is reported that this survey mainly involves six major platforms including Ctrip, Meituan, Tongcheng Travel, Qunar Travel, Tuniu Travel, and Fliggy Travel. 160 hotels on the platforms were randomly selected as the survey objects. Overall, all 160 hotel bookings involved in the survey require full payment for the room, and there are various forms of cancellation and complex regulations depending on the room type, price, or channel. Including: non cancellable, free cancellation within 15/30 minutes, limited time free cancellation, tiered fee cancellation, free cancellation at any time, dynamic adjustment cancellation, etc.
Among 160 hotels, 73 hotels have all or part of their room types marked as "non cancellable" or "free cancellation within 15/30 minutes", accounting for 45.6%. Such situations exist on all six major platforms. Among them, 66 hotels are designated as "non cancellable", with the vast majority (63) being four-star/high-end and above hotels; It is stipulated that 11 five-star/luxury/high-end hotels will be cancelled free of charge within 15/30 minutes. In addition, 11 hotels have stipulated that all products cannot be cancelled. It can be seen that there are many hotels implementing 'non cancellable' policies, mainly concentrated in mid to high end hotels, "said the Guangdong Provincial Consumer Council.
It is understood that with the popularity of online hotel booking, more and more hotel/homestay room types support flexible changes or cancellations within a certain period of time after booking, in order to attract users to place orders. However, during the peak holiday season, some internet famous hotels/homestays with tight bookings will set their room types as "non cancellable" to ensure revenue, while some hotels will offer low-priced but non cancellable room types to attract traffic and lock in occupancy rates. It is worth noting that these "irrevocable" terms often do not specify preconditions, such as the exception of objective force majeure.
Southern Metropolis Daily reporters found that on a certain online complaint platform, there were 13391 complaints about "hotels that cannot be cancelled", mainly due to reasons such as illness, inability to travel, urgent matters at home, weather conditions, airport flight delays, changes in itinerary, hotel price reductions, and hotels not clearly indicating non cancellable information. Objective or subjective factors led to consumers not checking in but experiencing cost losses.
Industry insiders have pointed out to Southern Metropolis Daily reporters that generally speaking, when consumers book a hotel on a travel platform and complete payment, and the hotel confirms the order, both parties have actually reached a hotel reservation contract. Failure by either party to fulfill contractual obligations constitutes a breach of contract. If either party refuses to perform or changes the contract already signed by both parties for their own interests, they shall bear the liability for breach of contract.
The Guangdong Provincial Consumer Council believes that unconditional "non cancelation" restricts consumers' rights, increases their responsibilities, and is extremely unfriendly to consumers. The reason is that hotel booking and consumption have their own particularities. Consumers have a certain time difference from booking the hotel to checking in. Whether they can check in on time is not only affected by force majeure, but also by a series of subjective and objective factors, especially some reasonable non subjective intentional reasons, such as physical condition, emergencies, etc. In actual consumption, there is also an objective need for consumers to unsubscribe due to plan adjustments, itinerary changes, and other reasons.
The 'non cancellable' clause is unilaterally formulated by the operator, and consumers cannot make more comprehensive and reasonable agreements on the specific circumstances for terminating the contract and corresponding breach of contract responsibilities, resulting in the inability to cancel the order for any reason or situation. In addition, regardless of whether it causes losses to the operator or how much losses are incurred, canceling the order will deduct all the house payment. This approach transfers the potential risk of cancellation as actual losses to consumers, which is obviously unfair, "said the Guangdong Provincial Consumer Council.
In addition to the issue of "non cancellable", the survey also found that in order to reconcile the contradiction between consumer demand for unsubscribing and hotel non cancellable rules, some platforms have implemented unsubscribing protection, cancellation insurance, etc. Currently, there is controversy over hotel cancellation insurance, mainly because the risk of losses caused by unsubscribing has been transferred to insurance institutions, but the premium is paid by consumers. There are also many problems with this system in practical operation, including:
A large number of restrictions have been set on the reasons for consumer cancellations; Adopting a single regulation and premium for complex and diverse hotel cancellation rules; Duplicate content with platform unsubscribe protection, etc.
It is reported that in order to achieve the goal of "conducting a supervision and rectifying a type of problem", the Guangdong Provincial Consumer Council recently held talks with the six platforms involved in the investigation to supervise and guide the implementation of rectification. From the feedback, the platform has taken measures to optimize supply, strengthen reminders, and enhance guarantees, such as further expanding more high-quality hotel resources that can be cancelled and guiding hotels to implement refund and reform policies such as "tiered cancellation"; Promptly remind users to cancel policies on browsing and trading pages, and provide a "revocable" tag on search pages; For consumers who are unable to travel due to special reasons, the platform will bear the corresponding losses or provide compensation after receiving relevant proof materials; Introduce cancellation insurance, no reason cancellation insurance, etc.
The Guangdong Provincial Consumer Council stated that it will continue to guide and supervise online travel platforms and related hotels to conscientiously implement the relevant provisions of the Consumer Law and the Implementation Regulations of the Consumer Law based on investigations and interviews, further strengthen consumer rights protection awareness, consciously fulfill the primary responsibility of protecting consumer rights and interests, comprehensively optimize transaction format terms, improve hotel booking and check-out systems, and win consumer trust and support through compliant and honest operation. At the same time, we call on hotels operating offline to conduct self-examination and self correction, modify unfair and unreasonable transaction format terms, optimize booking and check-out rules, and jointly create a trustworthy and harmonious accommodation consumption environment.