The Ministry of Culture and Tourism has drawn up a new regulation: "Big data killing" is the highest or a fine of 500,000.

Just after the Eleventh Golden Week, many tourists buy air tickets and book hotels through online travel platforms. However, while providing convenience for people, online platforms have also been criticized for false reservations, unreasonable low-cost tours, and "big data killing". In this regard, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism issued the "Interim Provisions on the Management of Online Tourism Management Services (Draft for Comment)" (hereinafter referred to as the "Interim Provisions") to further standardize online tourism management behavior.

OTA platform has become the hardest hit area.

Kill cooked, that is, the same goods or services, old customers see the price is much more expensive than new customers.

It is worth noting that in the past two years, many Internet platforms, including Didi Chuxing, Ctrip, JD.COM, Zhu Fei, Meituan, Taobao Movie, etc., have been exposed as suspected of "murder", covering online travel, online ticketing, online shopping, transportation and other fields, especially OTA (Online Travel Agency) online travel platform. In this regard, most of the above platforms deny it.

20181017 October, the famous writer Wang Xiaoshan shelled the Flying Pig Travel App in Weibo and "killed" it with big data. Flying Pig responded that big data has never been used and will never be used to harm the interests of consumers.

Ctrip, the industry leader, was also accused by users of "killing big data" earlier. On the evening of March 10, Weibo netizen @ Chen Liren broke the news that she found that she forgot to check the "reimbursement voucher" when she booked a plane ticket for Ctrip, and was reminded that there was no ticket when she returned and changed the payment. Search for air tickets again, the price is close to 1500 yuan. The ticket was purchased through HNA APP, which was 2 100 yuan lower than the price given by Ctrip for the first time.

On March 1 1, Ctrip issued an apology statement saying that Ctrip had never had any "big data killing" behavior, and found that the new version released on February 26 had bugs in the air ticket booking procedure, and apologized for this. According to preliminary statistics, the bug affected about 1300 people and involved about 100 orders. 10 night, 1 1, the Bug has been fixed, and customers will be contacted one by one to bear the losses caused by users.

Three routines of "killing big data"

Ma, Dean of China cross-border electronic commerce Research Institute of Zhejiang University, summed up the three routines of "killing cooked food":

The first is to use big data for "user portrait". According to the user's income level and consumption habits, push some goods to users, hide other goods, induce users' consumption choices, raise prices to a certain extent, and achieve the goal of "killing".

The second is to achieve "killing" through geographical location information. Merchants collect users' geographic location information through the mobile application background and analyze it in real time. If there are few potential competitors near the user's location, they will raise the price to some extent.

The third is to achieve "killing" through the behavioral details of user interaction with mobile applications. The behavioral details of users' interaction with applications, such as the frequency of inputting information and searching keywords, can reflect the urgency of users' demand for goods or services at this point in time to some extent, and some businesses will dynamically raise prices based on this information.

Why not kill? Kill?

Luo Pinliang, a professor in the Department of Industrial Economics of Fudan University School of Management, pointed out that, first of all, regular customers are often "self-righteous" and feel that they will get better service and more favorable prices if they are familiar with businesses. Unexpectedly, regular customers often have to pay the price for "self-righteousness". Secondly, the behavior track of regular customers is relatively solid, and they are tired of "shopping around" and have to pay a higher price for "inertia" or "stickiness". Finally, regular customers often have higher transfer costs and have to pay for the "locking effect". In short, compared with strangers, regular customers are not so sensitive to prices, that is, the price elasticity is relatively low. Therefore, "killing ripe" is essentially a price discrimination strategy.

Industry supervision is difficult, and the Ministry of Culture and Tourism has taken measures to rectify it.

The Ministry of Culture and Tourism pointed out that online travel enterprises and platforms are not only the service subjects of offline tourism industry, but also the operators of online e-commerce platforms, with dual identities. At present, the relevant domestic laws and regulations have not clearly defined the norms of online travel market, which brings great difficulties to industry supervision. Judging from the reports and complaints received by local cultural and tourism administrative departments and the problems reflected by relevant media reports, the problems involved in the above-mentioned enterprises and platforms mainly focus on the important aspects of industry development such as "tourism security and rescue obligations, consumer rights protection, false propaganda", which need to be regulated by improving laws and regulations.

The "Interim Provisions" responded to social hot issues. Specific provisions have been made on false reservations, unreasonable low-cost tours, price discrimination (big data killing), credit supervision and other issues.

/You know/

How do consumers defend their rights when they are "killed"?

When consumers encounter the problem of "price discrimination", how can they tell whether they have been "slaughtered"? How to defend rights?

Meng Huixin, assistant analyst of the Legal Rights Department of the E-commerce Research Center, said that consumers can choose to "shop around" to distinguish whether they are "cooked" or whether there is any difference in the price comparison between the same product and different consumers under the same conditions, and often pay attention to whether the price changes of goods provided by the same platform are too large.

"If consumers find that there is indeed price discrimination, they should keep the evidence in time and communicate with the platform. At the same time, they can report the situation to relevant departments and safeguard their legitimate rights and interests." Meng Huixin said.

It is worth noting that the new regulations put forward clear requirements for reporting and complaining channels of online travel platforms. Article 22 of the "Interim Provisions" shows that online travel operators should publicize 1230 1 national tourism service hotline and other complaint reporting channels in a prominent position, and establish and improve the dispute resolution mechanism and early warning publicity system.

"For a long time, various travel services such as air tickets and accommodation provided on the OTA platform have problems such as price' killing' and false propaganda and have not been managed. The release of the Interim Provisions further improves and refines the existing laws and regulations, stipulates the legal attributes and scope of use of big data, and at the same time strengthens the supervision of OTA platforms, which is conducive to the standardized development of the online travel industry. " Meng Huixin said.

According to china securities journal, CCTV Finance, Zhongxin Jingwei Client