688 COMPETITION LAW IN TOURISM Therefore, all touristic house rental service providers, who are legal and fulfil the applicable laws, do not violate any principle or provision protecting loyal competition and honest practices. A second issue is to examine if the differences between the laws applicable to tourist accommodation and house rental cause disloyal competition. Regarding this situation, there is a previous question to answer: do vacation rental and tourist accommodation perform the same activity? The first answer to this question is yes: there is a similar basic activity between rental vacations and tourist accommodation, which is the provision of accommodation services. There are, however, significant differences between these activities which distinguish one from the other. Firstly, these activities have a different nature. In contrast to tourist accommodation, house rental is not considered as touristic offer in Portugal. Since the first law about Alojamento Local, it is forbidden to refer to this kind of accommodation as tourist accommodation. Moreover, Article 17 of the law currently in force expressly prohibits rental houses from using any type of tourist accommodation designation or making any kind of allusion to it. On the other hand, the kind of services provided by house rental establishments is different from the ones provided by hotels and resorts. Tourist accommodation is a very complex activity, which involves, in addition to the accommodation service, the provision of many other services such as food and beverages, safety and entertainment, amongst others. This complexity makes the tourist accommodation activity more exigent and demanding than a house rental service, whichmust also be reflected in the legal exigencies and requirements. Finally, hotels and resorts are establishments with larger dimensions than house rental properties. House rentals are often explored in a non-professional way, by private parties. Even whenmarketed professionally by rental management companies, a medium-size hotel usually has more rooms to rent than all the rooms managed by a big company. The differences between tourist accommodation and house rental make it difficult to conclude that we are talking about the same activity. These differences lead the significant part of the literature to defend that the legal nature of the contracts concluded between the service provider and the customer is not the same21. 21 When talking about an accommodation contract in tourist accommodation, in house rental we have a mixed contract, with a rental contract base. Vd. SANCHEZ JORDÁN M., GARCIA GARCIA J. (2018). “La cesión de viviendas con fines turísticos: Concepto, naturaleza y delimitación frente a frente a figuras afines” Viviendas de uso turístico: Régimen civil, administrativo y fiscal. (Ed.) BRAVO DE MANSILLA G., Reus Editorial, pp. 55-95. MOYA BALLESTER M. (2019) “El objeto: Las prestaciones vinculadas alojamiento colaborativo”, El régimen jurídico del alojamiento colaborativo. (Ed.) GONSÁLBEZ PEQUEÑO H., Bosch, pp.137-166.
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