The Legal Impacts of COVID-19 in the Travel, Tourism and Hospitality Industry

11 considering it a priority to establish the parameters and values of our economy that must be defended. The result is that the new paradigm created by the expansion of the collaborative economy takes a form that makes it sustainable from a social perspective 22 . In particular, it has an impact on the accommodation sector, where platforms such as Airbnb or Homeaway can lead to unfair competition with traditional services, while, at the same time, influencing the property marketplace, either by increasing the price of such property (on acquisition or rental) or by changing the use of the buildings themselves. Such issues, which are in themselves local, should also be dealt with at local level, but making the activity of these new platforms compatible and, to some extent, complementary with that of the hotel and non-hotel sector, as well as maintaining the availability of a market for residential housing. It is here that the problem of the legal nature of these platforms lies, which has recently been addressed by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in its judgment of 19 December 2019, Case C 390/18, Ireland/Airbnb. It questioned the legal nature of Airbnb Ireland, which, according to the applicants, performed the Association pour un hébergement et un tourisme professionnels (AHTOP), an activity of intermediation and management the real estate and goodwill without the requisite professional card required by the Hoguet Law 23 , since its activity was not limited to the intermediation between hosts and users, but offered a whole series of additional services that were specific to the activity of intermediation in real estate transactions 24 . Consequently, the French Court, on hearing the case, referred two questions to the ECJ for a preliminary 22 Opinion (2017/C 185/04), p. 2. 23 Loi n.º 70-9, du 2 janvier 1970, réglementant les conditions d’exercice des activités relatives à certaines opérations portant sur les immeubles et les fonds de commerce. 24 Certainly, AHTOP considers that Airbnb Ireland (an Irish company based in Dublin, Ireland, which is part of the Airbnb group, which is made up of several companies directly or indirectly owned by Airbnb Inc., the latter company based in the United States) offers lessors other optional benefits, including a photography service, liability insurance and a damage guarantee of 800,000 €. It collaborates with the lessor by setting the price by providing him with a tool for estimating the price of his lease based on the average market prices on that platform. Such services are not free of charge, as is the intermediation of reservations, with proof that the guest or lessee, once he or she has accepted the reservation, pays Airbnb Payments UK the rental price, plus an amount of between 6% and 12% of the accommodation price for expenses and the service provided by Airbnb Ireland. It is Airbnb Payments UK which retains the funds on behalf of the landlord and transfers the funds to the host within 24 hours of the guest entering the accommodation, thus providing a double guarantee: the certainty of accommodation for the guest and payment for the host. In addition to this, there is also an additional service by which both host and guest can evaluate each other.