Travel is becoming an increasingly popular choice for people during the Spring Festival. According to data released by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, during the just passed 2025 Spring Festival holiday, there were 501 million domestic trips and a total expenditure of 677.02 billion yuan. Many people obtain information or make advance reservations through online cultural and tourism platforms. Compared to offline consumption, online cultural and tourism platforms are more convenient in terms of information acquisition, product selection, booking and cancellation. However, some online cultural and tourism platforms have problems such as non-standard self operated business, poor management of operators within the platform, bundling sales using information technology, and temporary price increases, which infringe on the legitimate rights and interests of consumers and trigger consumer disputes. Buying plane tickets on the platform, but being "bundled" with food delivery service packages without knowing it; After booking a hotel online, it was suddenly cancelled and a "big price increase" was found when booking again; The name of the hotel is marked with a five-star graphic, but actually it is not a five-star hotel... The Beijing Internet Court (hereinafter referred to as "Beimutu") recently released the trial of online cultural tourism consumption cases and typical cases, disclosing the above problems. According to statistics, in the more than 5 years since its establishment, more than half of the online cultural and tourism consumption cases tried by Beihu involve platform self operated businesses, covering various consumption scenarios of online cultural and tourism, including travel, accommodation, performance tickets, tourism product bookings, etc. To properly resolve disputes over online cultural tourism consumption, Beihu suggests that the platform fulfill its main responsibility and improve its management mechanism; Business operators operate with integrity and legality, and improve service levels. Concealing the true situation and suspected fraud on the platform has become a pain point for consumers. From September 9, 2018 to December 31, 2024, Beihu accepted 2052 online cultural and tourism consumption cases, with a significant increase in the number of cases in the past three years. Airline tickets, performance tickets, and online hotel bookings have become the top three consumption scenarios in terms of the number of cases. When consumer Wang purchased a plane ticket on the plane ticket sales platform, the platform displayed a face price of 280 yuan, with a cost of 70 yuan for aircraft construction and fuel, and an additional 40 yuan discount. In the end, he actually paid 310 yuan. However, after receiving the ticket information provided by the platform, Wang searched on the official software of the airline and found that the actual ticket price was 230 yuan, with a total of 300 yuan for aircraft construction and fuel costs of 70 yuan. What is the additional fee of 10 yuan? After investigation, the platform bundled a 10 yuan takeaway service package with the sale of airline tickets to Wang. Wang filed a lawsuit with the court, demanding that the platform refund the airfare and provide triple compensation. Beihu believes that in this case, as a platform operator, a certain company has the ability and obligation to set prominent and clear prompts on the user's purchase interface, as well as whether to check the option for value-added services. However, the company did not clearly explain to Wang the composition and purpose of the payment amount, and Wang was unable to clearly understand the details of the expenses on the purchase interface, nor could he refuse to pay the additional fee of 10 yuan. For this case, Beihu believes that the platform intentionally concealed the true information of the goods and committed price fraud by bundling takeaway service packages with consumers' flight bookings without setting clear and prominent reminders and options for refusal. Therefore, the platform should refund the ticket price and bear three times the compensation liability. The platform's suspected fraud is becoming a pain point for consumers. According to statistics from Beihu, there are four main types of consumer demands in related cases: firstly, making fraudulent claims against the prices of online pre ordered products; Secondly, there is a claim that the standard terms of the unsubscribe service are invalid; The third is to make fraudulent claims against service content that does not match the promotion; The fourth is to file a refund claim for contract changes that were not notified in a timely manner. A small number of parties also claim that the platform improperly leaked personal information, resulting in consumers being defrauded. Beihu also found that some operators have used information technology to engage in bundled sales, temporary price increases, collection of personal information beyond reasonable business needs, and big data killing. The court regulates the use of technological means to infringe upon the legitimate rights and interests of consumers in accordance with the law, and guides operators to carry out industrial innovation within the scope prescribed by the law, "said Sun Mingxi, a full-time member of the North China Judicial Committee. In another case, consumer Qiao booked two nights of hotel room accommodation on the platform and paid the fees. On the booking page, the hotel name was followed by a five-star icon (★★★★★), which Qiao believed represented a five-star hotel. After verification, it was found that the hotel was not a five-star hotel. Qiao believes that the platform is suspected of fraud and demands a refund of accommodation fees and triple compensation. The court supported his claim. Zhang Qian, Deputy Chief Judge of the Second Division of Beihu Comprehensive Trial, believes that platform operators should adhere to the principle of good faith and truthfully describe the characteristics of goods and services. Platform operators who use content that is easy to confuse consumers when promoting their products, and do not make special annotations and explanations in a significant way, according to daily life experience and customary judgment standards, are capable of misleading consumers, which constitutes fraudulent behavior and should bear punitive compensation. The confusion between platform self operated and non self operated businesses has led to difficulties in consumer rights protection. Online cultural and tourism platforms not only gather a large number of third-party operators, but also have self operated businesses. North Mutual has found that over half of the cases involve platform self operated businesses. The case shows that in carrying out self operated business, the platform has problems such as unclear labeling of self operated and non self operated businesses, and confusion in providing self operated business entities. According to the Electronic Commerce Law, platform operators should distinguish between self operated businesses and businesses conducted by third-party merchants in a prominent manner. However, in practice, platforms fail to distinguish or have unclear markings, making it difficult for consumers to accurately determine the identity of business operators. In addition, in the platform's self operated business, there are situations where the name used for promotion is different from the actual name of the operating entity, multiple affiliated enterprises with similar names participate in different business processes, and the name of the actual operator is not publicly disclosed in specific transactions, which increases the difficulty of resolving disputes. Poor management by platform operators often leads to difficulties in consumer rights protection. One of the main reasons for the frequent occurrence of disputes is the lax supervision and lack of governance on platforms, "Sun Mingxi said. Some platforms fail to fulfill their obligations of verifying and registering merchant information, which violates the provisions of the Electronic Commerce Law. Some platforms lack governance over illegal and irregular behaviors of merchants. In practice, there are situations where platforms are aware of merchants' illegal and irregular behaviors but fail to take effective measures in a timely manner. For example, during holidays, when consumers place orders, merchants refuse to confirm the order for reasons such as "landlord self occupation" or "decoration", and then increase the price and sell it separately. After consumers complain to the platform, the platform does not implement effective management measures for merchant behavior. The case of Yang suing a certain company over a network service contract dispute is an example. Yang booked 2 landscape rooms for 4 nights at a hotel in Sanya on a certain platform for a total of 464 yuan. After paying the full amount, he received a successful booking message that read "The service was provided by Mr./Ms.". On the same day, the platform customer service called Yang and informed him that the merchant stated that the room was full and could not arrange for check-in. The order was cancelled and the accommodation fee was refunded. Yang later discovered that he could still book rooms at the same time, in the same hotel, and in the same room type, but the price had changed to 378 yuan per room per night. If he booked according to the original booking plan, he would need to pay an accommodation fee of 3024 yuan. Yang sued the platform to the court, demanding compensation for the price difference. Beihu believes that in this case, the platform operator did not provide evidence to prove that it fulfilled its obligation to distinguish different businesses in a significant way during the booking process; After the successful booking, the confirmation message sent by the platform only mentioned that "the service is provided by XXX", but the prompt did not indicate the real name of the operator on the platform, which was not enough for Yang to understand its accurate meaning and unable to determine whether it was self operated by the platform or third-party operation. In the end, the platform compensated according to the compensation plan reached with Yang before canceling the order. Without clearly indicating whether it is self operated or operated business, which leads to misleading consumers, platform operators should bear the responsibility of service providers, "said Zhang Qian. Disputes over format contracts should be inclined towards consumers. Online cultural and tourism consumption tends to use format contracts, and the format terms pre drafted by operators do not comply with legal regulations and contain unfair and unreasonable content, becoming one of the main reasons for after-sales disputes. North Mutual has found that in practice, there are situations where operators fail to fulfill their obligation to provide guidance and explanation regarding clauses in standard contracts that exempt or reduce operator liability, increase consumer liability, restrict or exclude consumer primary rights, etc. According to the Civil Code, if there is a dispute over the interpretation of standard clauses, they should be interpreted according to the usual understanding. If there are two or more interpretations of the standard terms, an interpretation that is unfavorable to the party providing the standard terms shall be made. However, in practice, when there are multiple interpretations of refund, after-sales and other clauses in standard contracts, operators often tend to make interpretations that are unfavorable to consumers but beneficial to themselves in order to maintain their own business interests. For example, in the case, Fang purchased two concert tickets simultaneously on the ticketing platform. Due to a change in itinerary, Fang applied for a ticket refund from the platform. One ticket was successfully refunded, while the other ticket was informed by the platform that it could not be refunded. The ticketing notice on the ticket purchase page states: "During the sales stage, the same purchaser and account only enjoy one green channel benefit. After a refund is generated, if the purchaser/account purchases tickets for the same performance again, they will no longer enjoy the refund benefit. Fang sued the platform to the court, demanding a refund of the purchase price for another ticket. Beihu believes that in this case, the ticketing instructions on the ticketing page were pre drafted for repeated use and were not negotiated with the other party at the time of contract formation, and should be standard terms. The prerequisite for no longer enjoying the right to refund as stated in the ticketing notice is "to purchase tickets for the same session again after a refund has been issued". According to common understanding, it should be interpreted as "to purchase tickets again after a successful refund". The ticket in question was not purchased again after the plaintiff successfully refunded the ticket, so the platform cannot exempt the obligation to refund another ticket to Fang based on the aforementioned clause of "no longer enjoying the right to refund". Beihu pointed out that even according to the understanding that a ticketing account only enjoys the unconditional refund right once, this explanation is clearly more favorable to the platform. In this case, the applicable conditions for ticket refund in this case should also be interpreted in a more favorable manner to the party that did not provide the standard terms, and the platform should refund the entire ticket price to the plaintiff. If the operator agrees on the refund conditions in the form of standard terms, they should inform consumers in a prominent and popular way, and pay attention to avoiding unnecessary disputes due to ambiguity in the wording. Operators should operate with integrity and standardization, and consumers should make rational choices based on their own situations, jointly promoting the healthy and orderly development of the 'performance economy' Zhang Qian said. (New Society)