Association pour un Tourisme Professionnel
AToP
AToP est l’association représentative des acteurs de l’hébergement et du tourisme professionnels en France.
ID: 101473820092-39
Lobbying Activity
Response to Short-term rental initiative
8 Oct 2021
The Association for a Professional Hosting and Tourism (AhTop) welcomes the EC’s initiative aiming at ensuring a level playing field for all providers of accommodation services.
The emergence of tourism platforms has brought about a profound transformation of the sector, synonymous with renewal and opportunities for the local economy. Complementary to the hotel offer, they have changed the way we travel and have strengthened the attractiveness of cities and regions.
Many European municipalities have put in place measures to adapt to these new players and harmonies their accommodation policies. In Brussels, for example, anyone who wants to offer their accommodation for rent via a platform must obtain prior municipal authorization. In Amsterdam, since 2019, short-term rentals exceeding 30 days require a permit, unless the stay is at least one week. There is a registration system for checking tourist tax amounts and tax returns.
These regulations are little considered by the platforms that host advertisements since they benefit from the limited liability regime granted by the Directive 2000/31/EC on electronic commerce. Indeed, Article 14 of this text lays down the principle that content hosts are not liable - unless they have knowledge of the illegal activity or information - and Article 15 prohibits Member States from imposing on hosts a general obligation to monitor the information they transmit or store or a general obligation to actively seek facts or circumstances revealing illegal activities.
As a result, some users post rental ads without a registration number, a procedure which is mandatory in many EU countries (France, Netherlands, Portugal, etc.).
There is a need to establish fair rules between actors in the tourism sector.
What is at stake with the reflection led by DG Grow is the possibility for European cities to regulate their accommodation market and the capacity for tourism stakeholders to act without distorting competition.
Our proposals in the framework of this initiative are the following:
• Clarify the responsibility of tourism platforms and oblige them to check the legality of ads and advertisers and, if necessary, act on illegal content. Short-term rental platforms are no longer mere technical service providers. They select, reference, classify, highlight and recommend (thanks to the profiling of their users and sophisticated tools) services and content, and even monetize them.
• Broaden the scope of illegal content to include blatant violations of laws and regulations (e.g. short-term rental regulations).
• Allow MSs to request the removal of illegal content.
• Require platforms to improve their relationship with local authorities:
o Provide information on the identity of illegal renters to city departments.
o Remove illegal ads that are reported to them.
The inclusion in positive law of the responsibility of short-term rental platforms would require an amendment to recital 42 and articles 14 and 15 of the E-Commerce Directive, as well as the creation of a status for online intermediation platforms that would not be in a purely passive role. Such a platform could be defined according to the intermediation services offered to users:
• Offering services that are not part of the information society (insurance, cleaning services, concierge services, photography, etc.).
• Provision of advice on prices.
• Ranking of offers.
TO KNOW MORE ABOUT AHTOP
Founded in 2015, AhTop is the French association representing tourism professionals with more than 30.000 members. It gathers tourism physical players (hotels, hostels, camping, etc.) committed to promote a professional and quality tourism. AhTop has two main aims:
• Ensuring level playing field and reducing distortions of competition among tourism actors.
• Improving the hosting of tourists (safety, transport, customer-experience, etc.).
Read full responseResponse to Digital Services Act: deepening the Internal Market and clarifying responsibilities for digital services
29 Jan 2021
The Association for a Professional Hosting and Tourism (AhTop) welcomes the EC’s proposal aiming at clarifying the platforms’ responsibilities. Specifically, we consider the measures below are heading in the right direction:
• The establishment of a contact point and, where necessary, a legal representative ;
• The implementation of a notice and action mechanisms ;
• The cooperation with national authorities following orders.
By regulating vacation rental online marketplaces, the DSA will contribute to reshape the European tourism market. Therefore, we consider the proposal for regulation should include measures taking into account the specific tourism sector aiming at clarifying responsibilities fort short-term accommodation platforms:
• Formalise more thoroughly the cooperation between short-term rental platforms and national, regional and local authorities, in order to compel platforms to transmit information about users ;
• Include obligations for short-term accommodation platforms to make sure the advertisements meet national obligations such as registration numbers ;
• Improve the ‘country of origin’ principle: the case of the short-term holiday rental of residential spaces illustrates that public interests are increasingly under pressure due to the economic freedom that digital services enjoy. The DSA must restore this balance, whereby Member States must have sufficient perspectives within the scope of the CoO-prinicple to set rules for services that are provided on their own territory, but where the provider of the service is not established. As the EU acquis is not clear on this point, it is necessary to clarify the functioning of the CoO-principle first.
Read full responseResponse to Digital Services Act: deepening the Internal Market and clarifying responsibilities for digital services
30 Jun 2020
Over the last few years, many platforms have developed and delivered services in order to support both the companies in their business and the individuals in their day-to-day activities.
Today, we use platforms in almost every sector of our life: health, computing, transport, tourism, etc. In most cases, platforms do not play just like passive intermediaries. For example in the case of the short-term accommodations, platforms select, reference, classify, promote and recommend services and their contents (thanks to users profiling amongst others). Therefore, services platforms must be regarded as active platforms.
Together with tourism, the hospitality sector is the third largest socio-economic activity in the EU. Meanwhile, ever since big tech platforms entered the lodging scene in Europe, the hotel industry faces a series of unprecedented commercial and regulatory challenges. By regulating short-term accommodations platforms, the DSA will contribute to reshape the European tourism market. Thus, the interest of the tourism industry is to reach a balanced position between responsibility and the development of platforms and to ensure fair competition and a level playing field for all the actors of the hospitality sector operating within the Single Market.
AhTop calls on the European institutions to include the following key provisions within the envisaged Digital Services Act:
1. State clearly that the role of online intermediaries is not purely passive and clarify the concept of intermediary liability for collaborative economy services.
2. Adopt mandatory and transparent notice-and-action rules tailored to the type of the service provider and go beyond the “Good Samaritan” clause – whereby platforms are “encouraged” to proactively monitor the legality of content.
3. Include false and illicit advertisements under the scope of illicit content.
4. Extend the scope of illicit content to violations to short-term rentals rules.
5. Allow national authorities to impose proactive, reasonable and appropriate measures aimed at fighting against the promotion, hosting and diffusion of illicit content. Set simpler rules for cooperation between information society services and public authorities on data access, including for cooperation with fiscal authorities or illegal content notifications.
The AhTop considers that an ambitious reform of the E-commerce Directive will have a positive tangible impact at local scale for both European citizens and companies: rethinking liability rules for accommodations platforms will help municipalities such as Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Brussels, Paris, Romas, etc. to better regulate the housing market and to reduce the distortions of competition between tourism actors.
Read full response