Phenomenon One: Excessively high prices, large price differences for the same standard - Suzhou Wedding Planning

by wang08073q2 on 2012-03-07 10:41:43

For a long time, the wedding industry has been regarded as a business with unlimited opportunities, especially in recent years, its development momentum has been more vigorous. How is the current status of our city's wedding market? Recently, the National Bureau of Statistics investigation team conducted a special investigation on this matter. The results show that our city's wedding market often shows disharmonious notes, and there are four major irregularities that are worrying.

Irregularity one: Excessively high prices, big price differences for the same standard. Nowadays, wedding ceremonies have become a necessary item for newlyweds' weddings. The price of wedding ceremonies ranges from 3000 yuan per session to over 100,000 yuan, which can be said to meet the consumption needs of all levels. However, for the same service items, the price difference between different hotels can be nearly a thousand yuan, and the price difference between hotels and small celebration companies is almost half. In the detailed list of etiquette items provided by hotels, red carpets, backdrop walls, projectors, bubble machines, champagne towers, etc., are all one-time investments used multiple times. Some hotels charge newlyweds almost the entire cost of the set investment for a single wedding ceremony. Hotels take advantage of the psychology of newlyweds who must have a wedding ceremony when they get married, and the price has doubled year after year.

Irregularity two: Newlyweds are forced to accept a standardized ceremony. Almost all hotels that undertake weddings have their own etiquette teams or designate a certain celebration company. If newlyweds bring their own wedding etiquette, they need to pay a certain amount of entrance fee. Therefore, most newlyweds can only choose the matching wedding services provided by the hotel, basically without any right to choose freely. When choosing the content of the ceremony, they can only choose the set routines set by the hotel, and basic changes are not allowed. This leads to many people's weddings being the same in terms of appearance, content, and items, just replacing a pair of newlyweds, with no personal style at all.

Irregularity three: Forced buying and selling occurs during transactions, consumers have no evidence and no way to complain. The procedure for newlyweds to reserve a wedding banquet is also an unwritten rule that the current wedding market has followed for a long time. If newlyweds want to book a certain hotel at a certain time, they must book it several days or even months in advance and pay a certain deposit. Because customers pay the deposit very early, the scale of the banquet and the ceremony items are only determined ten days or so before the wedding. At this point, there are many differences in the price of the wedding banquet and the ceremony compared to when the deposit was paid earlier, and price increases are common phenomena. And by this time, many newlyweds cannot change the wedding venue anymore, and constrained by a deposit of several thousand yuan, most newlyweds can only accept it. Worse still, after collecting the deposit and the settlement fees for the wedding banquet and ceremony, they do not provide formal invoices, which leads to consumers having no evidence and being unable to complain, and problems are ultimately left unresolved.

Irregularity four: Irregular operations, no service contracts, no service quality standards. The lack of standard operations is mainly manifested in: substituting wedding cars, wedding cars arriving late, changing the master of ceremonies; fewer photos than previously promised, poor video quality, lost photos and videos later on, demanding extra money temporarily, withdrawing halfway through; not using the charged ceremony items, raising prices halfway through the ceremony and banquet, frequent occurrences of inferior materials. Wedding services generally do not have service contracts, and there are no relevant standards to measure quality levels. Due to reasons such as the irrepeatability of the wedding scene, these substandard services are equivalent to forcing the consuming newlyweds to accept them.

How to reduce and curb the irregularities in the wedding market? A senior industry insider suggests raising the entry threshold. Strictly reviewing the operating qualifications of wedding companies, improving the quality of personnel in the wedding industry, solving the fundamental problem causing the chaos in the wedding service market. Industry norms should be established. Unified contracts, quality standards, service processes, etc., should be set up. Industry taxation should be strengthened. For hotels engaged in wedding services, the competent authorities should standardize their business order and effectively improve service quality, allowing the wedding industry to operate legally and in accordance with regulations. The charging basis of wedding companies should be clarified, effectively curbing the bad phenomena of high prices and low quality, excessive pricing, and mid-process price hikes, ensuring the effective protection of consumer rights.