The Qingming holiday is coming, and the footsteps of the May Day holiday are getting closer, have you ever encountered a hotel that has been successfully booked but disappeared like a "ghost" when you are making travel plans...... Mr. Sun encountered such a "trouble" when he took his family on a holiday trip, and successfully booked a hotel room on an APP, but was told that "the room type of the order does not exist" when he was about to travel, and such a "ghost room" made Mr. Sun have to change the hotel and book again. Recently, the Chaoyang District People's Court of Beijing Municipality concluded such a "ghost room" consumer dispute case.

2023年9月22日，孫先生在某科技公司經營的APP平臺預訂了某酒店“典雅家庭房”1間3晚，入住時間是2023年10月1日，總價3503.22元。同年9月28日，孫先生接到某科技公司的客服電話，表示因服務公司未及時更新酒店房型資訊，導致孫先生訂單裡的房型在某酒店裡不存在，要求孫先生取消訂單，孫先生拒絕。10月4日，孫先生收到某科技公司簡訊通知其訂單取消，已付房款全部退回孫先生帳戶。

孫先生認為，某科技公司在APP上顯示錯誤的酒店房型資訊並收取房費行為屬於欺詐，侵犯其合法權益。某旅行社作為提供酒店預訂服務方也有責任，孫先生將上述兩家公司訴至法院，要求賠償三倍房價損失1萬余元。

After trial, the court held that a technology company had repeatedly informed consumers of the reservation service provider of the hotel involved in the case by means of page displays, hyperlink prompts, etc., that it had fulfilled its obligation to prompt in a conspicuous manner, and publicized the true identity and business license information of the merchant, and that Mr. Sun's basis for requiring the technology company to bear responsibility was insufficient.

A technology company provides information services for a travel agency, and the two parties establish a network information service contract. In fact, Mr. Sun provided hotel reservation services to a travel agency, and the travel agency established a hotel reservation service contract with Mr. Sun. From the time Mr. Sun confirmed the order and made the payment to the check-in time of his reservation, a travel agency contacted Mr. Sun several times through the customer service of a technology company and took the initiative to inform him of the error in the room type, and his voluntary notification was obviously aimed at properly solving the problem and stopping the loss in a timely manner, so the court found that the travel agency did not have the intention of fraud. However, a travel agency was obviously grossly negligent in showing the wrong room type to consumers, and should bear the liability for compensation arising from the infringement of Mr. Sun's legitimate rights and interests when booking a hotel.

The court held that due to the negligent act of a travel agency, Mr. Sun had to consider changing the hotel reservation content in the travel plan less than three days before the National Day holiday, which caused serious inconvenience to Mr. Sun, and to a certain extent, caused Mr. Sun to lose the opportunity to choose a reasonable consumption plan, and the court supported part of Mr. Sun's claim at the discretion of double the service consideration actually paid by the consumer, and ordered the travel agency to compensate Mr. Sun with RMB 22.0. After the verdict was pronounced, neither party appealed, and the judgment has entered into force.

Qin Bin, judge of the Wangjing People's Court of the Chaoyang District People's Court of Beijing, reminded that for a period of time, consumer disputes related to "ghost houses" have repeatedly appeared on online complaint platforms. The so-called "ghost room" refers to the hotel room or B&B booked by consumers on the online platform, some of which have an ambiguous address, some of which are "not right", and some of which even have fake orders.

From the perspective of potential safety hazards, most of the "ghost rooms" are for "shoddy", some houses may not have legal procedures, fire protection facilities, health and safety conditions may not meet the standards of tourist accommodation, and the personal and property safety of passengers is difficult to guarantee. From a legal point of view, China's Consumer Rights and Interests Protection Law clearly states that consumers enjoy the right to know, that is, consumers have the right to know the true situation of the goods they buy and use or the services they receive, and behind the "ghost room" order is the infringement of the legitimate rights and interests of consumers such as the right to know, which is also easy to cause economic losses to consumers.

Hotels and B&Bs are one of the "transit stations" for tourists to have an in-depth understanding of the customs and customs of their travel destinations, and they are also an important starting point for releasing the potential of cultural tourism consumption. The rule of law escorts cultural and tourism consumption, and the "ghost house" must not be allowed to disrupt the market order. In the era of "Internet +", tourists can enter the hotel booking interface to view the hotel room type online when they open the mobile phone APP, and the online booking platform brings convenience at the same time, but also puts forward higher requirements for the legitimacy and standardization of each link.

Service providers, platform displayers, data docking parties and other entities should strengthen supervision, improve the review process, provide consumers with more efficient, convenient, flexible and considerate services, and meet the beautiful expectations of consumers in the digital era to embrace "poetry and distance". Producers and operators should strictly abide by the bottom line of laws and business ethics, take the initiative to disclose relevant information about goods and services in accordance with the law, and should not deliberately "make a fuss" about the poor information of goods, but also earnestly fulfill their duty of care, and do not cause damage to consumers' right to know due to negligent acts. If the producer or operator fails to truthfully and comprehensively disclose the relevant information of the goods and services, the consumer's right to know will be violated, and the consumer has the right to claim compensation in accordance with the law; If the producer or operator deliberately conceals the true situation or deliberately falsely advertises, it may constitute fraud and receive serious consequences of punitive damages.

Tan Qiugui, a professor at the Institute of Procedural Law of China University of Political Science and Law, said that with the development of information technology, the platform economy supported by Internet platforms has become increasingly popular in daily life. Transactions through the network have the advantages of resource concentration, wide range of choices, convenient transactions, and high efficiency, but it also faces problems such as difficult to distinguish the authenticity of goods, mixed services, and uneven information due to its virtuality and diversification of subjects. It is not uncommon for online shopping products to be on the wrong page and services to be untrue, and some platforms even take advantage of their dominant market position and technical means to carry out fraudulent acts that infringe on the rights and interests of consumers. It is urgent to strengthen the supervision of the platform economy and optimize the online consumption environment. In this regard, there is much more work to be done in addition to administrative measures such as anti-monopoly and anti-unfair competition, regulating fees, and enforcing data security and personal information protection.

The process and outcome of judicial resolution of disputes arising from platform transactions, especially online consumer disputes, play an important role in regulating them. Platforms, settled merchants, and consumers will actively or passively accept the results of judicial adjudication, and adjust their behavior according to the process and results of adjudication, which is the embodiment of the normative function of the judiciary.

In the "ghost room" case heard by the Chaoyang District People's Court of Beijing, the plaintiff claimed that the defendant's behavior constituted consumer fraud and requested that the provisions of the Consumer Rights Protection Law be applied to order the defendant to "refund one and compensate three". On the ground, it was ordered to "refund one and compensate one". The judgment in this case clarified the merchant's obligation to review the information and ordered it to bear the liability for damages to the consumer on the grounds that it failed to fully perform the obligation, which not only protects the legitimate rights and interests of the consumer and plays the function of resolving conflicts and disputes in litigation, but also will guide the information review behavior of the merchant, which plays an important role in promoting the merchant to strengthen its own management, fully fulfill the obligation of information review, ensure the authenticity and accuracy of the data on the online platform, and optimize the online consumption environment.