PRIVATE ANTITRUST ENFORCEMENT IN THE TOURISM INDUSTRY 107 in Europe. This means that the abovementioned trend will be reflected soon be reflected in the tourism industry as an important part of the market in many states. The need of consumer protection in the tourism industry cannot be doubted when it has for years been reflected in a number of decisions, judgments and academic papers, as well as legislation including EU directives. Now more than ever, the time to attract the attention of businesses, practitioners and scholars by private antitrust enforcement as a significant part of the legal environment of the tourism industry has come. Unlawful practices which violate competition law can still occur between competitors in the tourism market (horizontal relations). However, the main issue is related to non-competitors’ cooperation (vertical relations). This is because if competitors decide to become involved in anti-competitive practices directly (e.g. price fixing, elimination from the market, market foreclosure, etc.), the situation is more straightforward. Any concerted practice, any collusion or abuse of dominant position that violates antitrust law, must bring about public sanctions as well as potential private damages actions. The assessment of such intentional unlawful conduct is not particularly difficult in the tourism industry or in other sectors of the economy. The real difficulty is usually in relation to vertical cooperation (e.g. between tour operators and subcontractors, service providers, airlines, hotel operators, etc.) where the assessment of particular practices or agreements is often unclear. This means that enterprises operating in the tourism industry must pay more attention to a legal and factual basis of cooperation with other enterprises. This need for caution should be addressed by small and large enterprises alike as all parties can all be sanctioned in the event of infringement, even though the fines may differ in amounts. The items discussed in this paper have been introduced with the intention to improve the awareness of antitrust enforcement within the tourism industry. This awareness, however, is not satisfactory enough. This is the start of an important part of work that must be performed by the tourism industry, supported by qualified lawyers and academics, in order to avoid the adverse and sometimes even disastrous consequences of antitrust law infringement. There are a number of accessible materials, tools and other measures, such as publications, training sessions and antitrust compliance programs to be implemented by businesses of the tourism industry51. This is why the issue is to 51 See e.g. ICC Antitrust Compliance Toolkit, accessible at: https://iccwbo.org/publication/icc-antitrust- -compliance-toolkit/.
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