354 LEGAL IMPACTS OF COVID-19 IN THE TOURISM INDUSTRY 1. WHY THE NEED TO FOCUS ON PRIVACY? In the myriad of problems we are facing with, one of the hot topics is certainly that of data protection5. Nowadays we discuss about, among others, privacy at the workplace6, privacy and health7, privacy and people tracking8. We will surely come to discuss privacy and tourism as well and soon. This if we consider the admirable initiatives of these days by the tourism industry, which is trying to relaunch the tourism sector and, above all, to look to its future. By way of example, we can talk about Spain and Israel (not to mention our Italy). As regards Spain, an interesting initiative is proposed by the Castroconsulting Business Strategy, a consulting firm that specialises in communication and marketing of tourism. This firm has taken the initiative to launch a strategy aimed at helping and supporting tourism – the project “LovingTourism”, a Spanish collaborative and participative platform to support the relaunch of tourism activity through various actions9. With regard to Israel, the project “Jerusalem is Travelling 2U” can be mentioned, which lands on the web for daydreams at the click of a button. An interactive online platform that allows all tourists to embark on a virtual journey while sitting on their couch. It was born from a collaboration between the Jerusalem Municipality, the East Jerusalem Development Company and Bridgify – an online company that specialises in the development of personalised smart travel around the world10. This project involve the so-called Smart Tourism, the implementation of tourism by using technology. Thus, in the tourism field we are witnessing a great digital transformation. The stereotype of the classic tourist with a map is disappearing fast. This is clear by observing the impact that the digital revolution is having on tourism and in particular the birth of tourism experiences different from those we are used to, not so much for the substance as for the form, destined to be more and more 5 As known, with reference to data protection the law to be applied is the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), that is the Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC. 6 See C. Ogriseg, GDPR and Personal Data Protection in the Employment Context, in Labour and Law Issues, vol. 3, 2, 2017, pp. 1-24. 7 See L. Lenert, B.Y. McSwain, Balancing health privacy, health information exchange, and research in the context of Covid-19 pandemic, in Journal of the American Mediacal Informatics Association, vol. 27, 6, 2020, pp. 963-977. 8 See M. A. Azad et al., A first look at privacy analysis of covid-19 contat tracing mobile applications, in IEEE Internet of Tings Journal, 2020, pp. 1-20. 9 Available in: https://lovingtourism.es/es/. 10 Available in: https://travelnostop.com/news/esteri/jerusalem-is-travelling-2u-si-viaggi-gerusalemmesenza-uscire-casa_488519.
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