The China National Tourism Administration ("CNTA") has recently issued four industrial standards, including the Specification for Tour Operators to Deal with Complaints (the "Specification"), all of which will enter into force as of October 1, 2017.
The Specification provides for basic requirements for tour operators to handle complaints, requirements on the establishment of complaint-handling departments, staffing and institutional establishment, scope of complaints to be dealt with and ways to handle these complaints, and requirements on complaint-elimination, and applies to travel agencies, tourist sites and operators that provide tourists with transportation, accommodation, catering, shopping, recreation and other services. Further, the Specification calls for making relevant approaches available to communicate information about the complaint-handling and give feedback in this regard, in order to pass information in relation to the complaint-handling in a timely and accurate manner; the Specification also requires treating all complainants and possibly involved employees in an equal and impartial way, protecting the complainants' privacy, and dealing with any complaint in accordance with the State's applicable laws, regulations and standards and the tour contracts entered into with the tourists. Moreover, the Specification states that operators are required to specify and publish the scope of accepting complaints, including the situation in which "any personal injury or property damage is caused to a complainant due to the liability of the tour operator".