EU COMPETITION LAW AND POLICY IN THE TOURISM SECTOR 31 respond to changing realities, the EU legislator has recently intervened to regulate both traditional and digital travel services. These developments also affect a competition law and policy. 2.1. “Traditional” actors and EU rules applicable to them There is no EU-wide definition of “tourism”. “Travel service” is a broad concept and covers carriage of passengers, non-residential accommodation, car rental and any other tourist service not falling under the three preceding points36. The travel industry value chain comprises travel suppliers (e.g. airlines and rail companies, hotel operators, car rental companies, etc.), tour operators and travel agencies37. Hotels and similar structures form the core of tourism services, being defined as “hotels; motels; holiday villages; tourist/service apartments; boarding houses; seasonal residential hotels; bed-and-breakfast establishments run as a business; health farms; and any other tourist accommodation structures with similar features to one or more of the preceding categories”38. With more than 3.1 billion nights spent in tourist accommodation establishments in the EU39, the sub-sector is subject to continuous growth. Furthermore, the emergence of online intermediaries for accommodation booking has altered the competitive landscape in the sector40. Despite the growing speculation regarding the upcoming EU-wide regulation of such intermediaries, concrete initiatives have not been tabled yet. Tour operators are wholesalers, mainly offering package41 holidays, whereby multiple travel services are combined. They develop tourism products by 36 Directive (EU) 2015/2302 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 November 2015 on package travel and linked travel arrangements, 90/314/EEC OJ L 326, 11.12.2015, pp. 1-33, Article 3(1); hereinafter: “the Package Travel Directive”. 37 Case M.8046 – TUI/Transat France, 20.10.2016, para. 8. 38 Case T-219/13, Pietro Ferracci v European Commission, judgment of the General Court of 15 September 2016, ECLI:EU:T:2016:485. 39 Eurostat, Number of nights spent in the EU up by 2% in 2018, 23.01.2019, available at: https://ec.europa.eu/ eurostat/documents/2995521/9516057/4-23012019-AP-EN.pdf/336716b1-18e5-4250-a102-3b8102bac792. 40 OECD (2018, supra note 22) suggests that players such as AirBnB or HomeAway, contributed to private accommodation becoming more accessible for tourism and exerting competitive pressure on hotels. In response, large hotel chains consider further increases in investment in their brands, loyalty programs and advertising on search engines; see: European Commission, Report on The Monitoring Exercise Carried out in the Online Hotel Booking Sector by EU Competition Authorities in 2016 (hereinafter: “EC Online Hotel Booking Monitoring Report”), available at: https://ec.europa.eu/competition/ecn/hotel_monitoring_report_en.pdf, p. 22. 41 For EU legislation purposes, “package” refers to “a combination of at least two different types of travel services for the purpose of the same trip or holiday”; see: the Package Travel Directive, Article 3(2).
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