China National Tourism Administration (CNTA) will spend one year's effort to regulate tourist market. Slash of service price and non-transparent prices in contracts will be the two major problems to handle with.

The campaign will start from September this year. To make the market cleaner, CNTA has punished those travel agencies that operated against regulations and publicized them in media.

Legal entities and general managers were informed about related laws and regulations in order to curb illegal activities.

Meanwhile, the national tourist administration required travel agencies to list the detailed prices of services in the contract to make it transparent. Prices of those optional items of services were also required to be specified in the contract.

For those travel agencies and tour guides that do business in line with laws and regulations, the tourist administration will set up a credit record for them. It also plans to establish a qualifying rating system among travel agencies. Regulations for outbound tours will be implemented on a trial base.

(Chinanews.cn August 25, 2005)