Statutory body unnecessary, lawmakers told
The government has again rejected calls for the establishment of an independent statutory body to monitor the tourism industry, saying that an improvement of the current system led by the Travel Industry Council (TIC) will be enough.
Secretary for Economic Development and Labour Stephen Ip Shu-kwan said combating abuses by operators of zero-fee tours required efforts by all parties and the government would look into how to improve the council's structure.
He was responding to legislators' questions at a meeting of the Legislative Council's economic services panel, after a tour guide and an agent were penalised by the council for abandoning a group of mainland tourists who refused to shop.
Legislator Fred Li Wah-ming said the council was a commercial organisation in which 70 per cent of the representatives were from the industry, mostly bosses of travel agents. 'How do you strike a balance between the industry's and consumers' interests,' he asked.
'If you look at other countries such as Malaysia and Singapore, their governments take responsibility to govern the travel industry. With the present structure, the government can do nothing even if the TIC makes a wrong decision. In the long run, a statutory body should be set up.'
Democratic Party chairman Lee Wing-tat said the tourism industry belonged to the whole of Hong Kong and there had been calls for more than a decade for a statutory body to regulate it.