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

18 Nevertheless, it would be desirable, both in these hospitality consumption platforms and other types of business models (such as Airbnb), to warn on their websites as a businessman, professional or individual of the host, as well as a caption that clearly alludes to who assumes responsibility for providing the service. In this line, a text similar to that proposed in Directive (EU) 2015/2302 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 November 2015 on package travel and linked travel services could be followed concerning the responsibility of the platforms that allow the formation of a linked travel service or dynamic package 40 . IV. Transport Activities IV.1. Uber as a transport company In the same way we analysed Airbnb and the rest of the hospitality consumption platforms, the possible differences that could exist between these platforms, both concerning how they operate (either as a business activity or as a collaborative economy), the same will be done in the field of transport. Here, the different legal nature of the platforms that operate to provide the professional or private transport service and, consequently, the legal relationship between the parties to the service is even more evident. Starting with Uber’s well-known platform or app, this is an online platform for car rental with a driver, through which the user can demand and hire the service of a vehicle with a driver for relatively short urban or interurban journeys. This service, far from the initials of UberPop, is provided today by a professional driver, who must own a VTC license, and who, on behalf of the platform, carries out this commercial activity for profit 41 . The identification of Uber as a business model specific to B2C (Business-to-Consumer) relations is clear when we examine the relationship between the entity and the users of the service, applying the aforementioned Commission criteria, endorsed, in turn, by the arguments put forward by the ECJ in its judgments of 20 December 2017 (Case C-434/15, 40 See GONZÁLEZ CABRERA, I., “Medidas de protección del consumidor frente a los operadores turísticos: seguros, fianzas y otras garantías”, Revista de Derecho Bancario y Bursátil, no. 152, 2018, electronic ed. 41 Study of the Asociación Española de la Economía Digital (adigital) y Sharing España: Los modelos colaborativos y bajo demanda en plataformas digitales , available in: https://www.adigital.org/media/plataformas-colaborativas.pdf, p. 21.