Sustainable Tourism Law

DRAFT UNWTO CONVENTION ON THE PROTECTION OF TOURISTS 387 i)Service providers who share assets, resources, time or competence ii) Users of those services iii)Intermediaries that, through an online platform, connect the service providers with the users and facilitate the deals between them The accommodation service is a tourism service (Article 3c(i)). And the tourism service provider is any natural person or any legal person (irrespective of its private or public nature) who sells, offers to sell, supplies or undertakes to supply a tourism service to the tourist (Article 3d). The issues of liability are placed in relation to all intervenients and in every possible relation. In this paper we will try to address, briefly, how the intermediaries respond (or should respond) before the users in the sharing accommodation, as highlighted in the figure below: Fig. 1: Relation between all intervenients This so-called sharing accommodation has, in fact, the potential to create multiple, noteworthy damages, which we should strive to prevent. As always in the history of the mankind, new realities demand new solutions. And we should start looking for them immediately. In the words of Wosskow, who wrote down a report to the UK Minister of Business, “As with all disruption, we also need to be careful. Sharing economy businesses and traditional operators need to be treated fairly, particularly in terms of regulation. Consumers must be protected, and trust must be strengthened in online transactions”. Therefore, “Regulations must be examined to ensure they are still fit for purpose and meet people’s expectations – particularly for accommodation and online task-sharing platforms” .