Travel Contract Legal Issues

According to the statistics, China has already become a big tourism country. But incompatibly with the current tourism development situation, China tourism legislation is seriously backward, which is mainly embodied in that tourism contract still belongs to nameless contract. Absence of legislation leads to difficulties in judicial practice directly; facing with frequent tourism contract disputes, the limitation of the current law is even more obvious. So the study on legal issues of tourism contract is significant. According to the basic principals of Contract Law, several legal issues of tourism contract are discussed in this paper combining with several typical tourism contract cases from both theoretical and practical points of view. Besides introduction and conclusion, this paper includes five parts.Part 1 is about the legal implications of the tourism contract. Taking a general view of legislation of each country, international treaties and relevant theoretical works, the tourism contract concepts can be understood in broad sense and narrow sense. Narrow sense is acceptable in this paper. The features of tourism contract mainly include bilateralism, consensus, integrity, term and group, etc. In regard to the legal nature of the tourism contract, the opinion of contractor's agreement theory is proposed in this paper through the analysis of the sales contract theory, commission contract theory and contract of commission agency theory.Part 2 is about the parties of the tourism contract and the third party involved in the contract. Both the tourist and the tourism operator are the parties of the tourism contract. Combining with the characteristics of tourism activities, the identification standard of tourists and tourism operators is proposed in this paper. In tourism practice, there is a lot of such behavior as performing tourism payment by suppliers instead of tourism operators. There is a dispute over the legal status of suppliers between altruistic contract theory and performing assistant theory, among which the latter is acceptable in this paper.Part 3 is about the main obligations of the contract parties. With the contract obligations which shall be borne by tourism contract parties as the main theme, the following obligations are discussed in this paper, including tourism expense payment, cooperation obligation and subordinate obligation of the tourists, and obligations of organizing & providing tourism service, fault guarantee and safety guarantee of tourism operators.Part 4 is about the change and cancellation of tourism contract. Combining with specific tourism contract cases, such theoretical issues as main body change and content change of the tourism contract are respectively discussed in this paper. Besides, comparative analysis and type analysis on the cancellation rights of tourists and tourism operators are conducted.Part 5 is about the liabilities for breach of tourism contract. In this paper, it is believed that non-fault liability principle shall be followed in the determination of liabilities for breach of tourism contract. Combining with specific cases, the detailed application of such forms of liabilities as continuing performance, taking remedial measures, compensating for losses and paying penalty, etc. are discussed. Besides, the justifiability analysis on the compensation issues of mental damage from breach of tourism contract is conducted in this paper, claiming to break out of traditional theories and to establish mental damage compensation system for breach of tourism contract in China.