Tourism | Local travel agencies surprised by ‘elderly travelers fee’

Local travel agencies have expressed their lack of awareness of an “elderly fee” charged in some situations to aged applicants of package tours, according to interviews conducted yesterday by the Times..
When trying to apply for the package tour at different travel agencies in Chengdu, the capital city of Sichuan province, a Sichuan couple – Mr He, aged 72, and his 68-year-old wife – were required to pay an extra RMB1,200 each due to their age. According to Mr He, the staff told the couple that customers younger than 28 or older than 59 would be charged an additional fee depending on their destination of travel.
Miss Vu, responsible for Gray Line Tours of Macau Ltd, a local travel agency specialized in inbound services, showed surprise when asked by the MDT about the so-called “elderly travelers’ fee.” “It is the first time that I have heard about such fee,” she admitted, adding that “to charge that is unreasonable.” According to Miss Vu, aged travelers normally enjoy special discounts when visiting places that would incur these fees, and that “regardless of the schedule, or the kind of tickets, older customers always get cheaper prices.” This information was echoed by another agency contacted by the Times.
The MDT reporter contacted five travel agencies based on Taobao, China’s most popular online shopping platform. All five told the Times that no extra fees are charged for “being old”, and that they know of no companies requesting customers to pay extra money for their age.
As to conceivable reasons behind the extra fees, Mr Qiu, from a local travel agency, said that “[pricing policies] treat customers equally. In my opinion, each agent thinks in a different way. Some customers fail to deliver certain evidence required by the agencies, […] and this forces agencies to take on added risks [which might be the reason why some agencies charge extra]. They might even consider the distance from starting point to destination [when considering extra fees].” According to Qiu, if travelers fail to inform travel agencies of their special conditions, then, in case of an accident, the travel agencies are called upon to take responsibility. He finished by noting that his oldest customer was over 80 years of age.
In turn, the Taobao based agencies refuse to serve customers older than 65. Particularly, one company first said it simply will not provide services to people over 80, but then refused to accept the requests of a hypothetical 76-year-old customer. “In spite of 80 being the age limit for providing service, we don’t accept customers who are over 65,” customer service personnel replied with no further explanation as to the  criteria. According to mainland media, children and older people are considered low-spending customers, therefore “additional fees” are charged to make up for the losses. Staff reporter