Turizmde tüketici korunması, AT'de ve Türkiye'de durum

Abstract

Beş tüketici hakkının 1962 yılında tanımlanmasından sonra bu haklar tüketici korunmasının temelini oluşturmuştur. Bunlar tüketicinin sağlık ve güvenliğinin, ekonomik çıkarlarının, tazmin hakkının, bilgilendirme ve eğitiminin ve temsil edilmesinin sağlanmasıdır. Bu çalışmanın birinci bölümünde tüketicinin beş hakkı, AT ülkeleri ve Türkiye'deki uygulamaları incelenecektir. İkinci bölümde ise tüketici korunmasının turizm alanındaki yöntemleri, önleyici ve telafi edici olarak ve turistin karşılaşabileceği riskler göz önünde tutularak ele alınacaktır. Bu konudaki çalışmalar Avrupa'da çok yem", Türkiye'de ise ancak başlama aşamasındadır. Amaç, mevzuat ve koruma yöntemlerinin incelenmesi olup Türkiye'de yapılabilecek çalışmalara uygulama örnekleri sunabilmektir. Çalışmanın üçüncü bölümünde Türkiye'de turizm ile mevcut mevzuatın tüketicinin korunmasını ilgilerdirenleri incelenmiştir. Sonuç ve öneriler kısmında ise Türkiye'de turizmde tüketicinin korunması konusunda getirilebilecek öneriler belirtilmiştir.

The "consumer" is defined as being the person who buys products and ith the purpose of personal or family consumption. The perfect competition presupposes that by effective free market, consumers will end up with finding satisfactory goods and services in the market. The perfect competition, in its theoretical definition is not very likely to exist and consumers need to be protected against all unfair practices resulting from either the promotional activities of firms such as misleading advertising and one-sided conditions of contracts or the failure to follow established standards in the production of goods and services. The concept of consumer protection started first in the United States in the 1960's and spread quickly through European countries. In the European Community established with the Treaty of Rome, three main programs for consumer protection have been devised between 1975 and 1990. They were based on five consumer rights defined by the first program : - The right for health and safety protection - The right for economic protection - The right to be compensated - The right to be informed and educated - The right to be represented These rights protect the consumer through information and education against unhealthy and unsafe food and products, unfair conditions of the contracts, misleading publicity and offer them legal and para-legal means of asking for compensation personnally or as representatives of a group of consumers. The consumer protection may be preventive and curative. The aim is to have more preventive protection through law and standards and to keep them up-to-date and permanent. Curative protection offers consumers possibilities of going to court, which are usually expensive and time consuming or to bodies such as Complaints and Conciliation Boards and small claims courts where formalities are cheaper and easier. In the EC, CCC - Consumer Consultive Committee - deals with the problems of the consumers and holds four main European associations in its body : BEUC, COFACE, CES and EUROCOOP. VIII Consumer associations provide their members with all the necessary information about the market, they protect them in courts and show guidance for problems or serve as arbitration bodies. In the EC, the fact that 3.4 % of the population was a member of a consumer association in 1985, shows that awareness about these associations is not very spread. Still, consumerism in gaining importance especially in search of a quality/price relation. In Turkey, consumer protection existed under different laws starting from the Seldjoukide period on. Since the beginnings of the Republic, a large number of regulations have been created and the concept has gained a constitutional basis in 1982. Different bodies such as Turkish Standards Institution, Chambers of Commerce, Consumer Associations, Municipalities, public institutions and mass media provide information and protection to consumers. However, none of the existing laws and regulations and institutions bring the level of protection of Turkish consumers to that of Europeans'. Since Turkey has asked for the membership to the EC, she tries to create similar standards for its goods and services to provide economic, legal, political, social and cultural harmonisation with the EC. Tourism is an important developping sector. In the EC more than half of the citizens go on holidays at least once a year and one thirds of them use organised tours to go to non-member countries. This shows the importance of travel agents and tour operators for the outgoing tourism of Europe and thus the incoming for Turkey. To establish a tourism policy of the EC, the Commission determined six action areas in 1986 : a. To facilitate and promote tourism in the EC b. To create a better seasonal and regional distribution of tourism c. To provide a better information and protection for tourists d. To provide better working conditions for the tourism sector. e. To be aware of the existing problems in the tourism sector f. To provide a better use of the Community Structual Funds for tourism In the 1990's, the Community will try to strenghthen the horizontal approach of the EC and member state policies on tourism by increasing the available information for the sector, by establishing cooperation between member states and by creating a differentiation for touristic season and a better protection for tourists as consumers. The EC will also try to differentiate tourism activities, to spread the European know-how to Central and East European countries and to promote European tourism in the third countries. IX The protection of the tourist as a consumer is a difficult subject to define because it deals with subjective concepts and there are few laws involved directly with tourist protection. It deals with accommodation and catering units, travel agencies, guides, transporters, border formalities, tourism police, insurance, compensation funds, complains of tourists, facilities for the disabled... A package tour puts together services of transport, accommodation and other non ancillary services to these first two. A package tour involves a tourist, a tour operator and a travel agency. The five rights of consumers exist also for tourists : a. Health protection deals with environment protection, diseases, health insurance, legal procedures and available accessibility of health services. The protection of safety involes ID cards, means of transport, safety precautions against fire in public buildings and accommodation establishments. b. The economic rights of tourists are protected in case of the economic failure of tour operators or travel agencies and against losses, injury, unsatisf action resulting from the services and the non-functionning of the contract caused by the consumer. c. The consumer may be compensated by the Tourism Funds existing in some contries. d. The tourist has the right to be informed adequately and factfully about prices, accommodation and services provided by the travel agents. e. The right for representation is usually handled by consumer associations of different countries. The tourist may encounter risks due to "force majeure" reasons or to the fault of travel agents. The risks may be objective and qualitative or subjective and quantitative. The tourists may seek redress through judicial means, arbitration or compensation boards. With the exception of subjective risks, all risks are insurable. The complaints of the tourist as a consumer have gained importance in the last years due to the increasing comsumerism and of unexperienced travel agents in the market. The complaints are usually based on pre-contractual, contractual and post -contractual problems. The pre-contractual problems concern prices, quality of services, accommodation description, length of sojourn and reservation conditions. Contractual problems are the increase of price, changes in services promised for, lack of services advertised for, cancellation conditions, unfair insurance conditions, commercial failure of tour operators, insufficient transportation, overbooking with the airlines, and unsatisfactory hotel services. Post-contractual problems arise from the difficulty in determining to whom the fault belongs and where to address the complaint. There are also social problems concerning disabled tourists, hotel fires and environment. Tourists' complaints are useful for the touristic establishments and they create initiatives for managers to educate their work force, to diminish future complaints, to create an idea of quality and of responsibility and to provide goods and services expected by consumers. Laws and regulations are needed to provide consumer protection in tourism. In the EC, the protection of tourists started in 1982 and ended up with Directives of "the Standardised Information in Existing Hotels", "the Safety in Hotels" and "Package Travel, Package Holidays and Package Tours". The action plan prepared in 1991 has among its aims, the concept of protection of tourists and assistance for disabled travellers. In Turkey, tourism has gone through different stages and it has reached more than 5.3 million tourists and a tourism revenue of 3.300 million dollars in 1990. 50.7 % of tourists caning to Turkey are from EC countries; thus Turkey needs to follow all new trends on tourism in the EC. About the protection of tourists, Turkish Standards Institute started in 1989 to devise service standards. Two of them which concern general regulations about accommodation establishments and restaurants are vital for tourism. Some standards about coffee houses, Turkish baths, public WC, discoteques, bars establish general rules and others such as fire protection in public places concern directly the safety of consumers or tourists. Municipalities, insurance and transport companies take part directly or indirectly in the protection of tourists. The main laws and regulations on this subject are introduced by the Ministry of Tourism. Turkey has a number of laws limiting the unfair behavior of touristic establishments, travel agents, hotels, airline companies towards the tourists but the problems lay in the enforcement of these laws. In order to provide information for tourists it is possible to determine some minimum standards mainly for the information concerning price, hotel descriptions, insurance and cancellation conditions explained in the brochures. All pre-contractual written information may be considered as a contaract. In order to protect his economic rights, increases in prices of package tours may be regulated in such a way that any increases up to a certain percentage and after a determined time before the departure date, would not be reflected to the consumers. XI In countries like Turkey where tourism is at its expension point with a sufficient number of bed capacity, a Tourism Council may be founded by the representatives of the sector and of the Ministry of Tourism. Thus all touristic activities as well as their human dimensions may be improved.