INTERNATIONAL REPORT—After years of negotiations, each of the European Union’s 27 members ratified the Treaty of Lisbon. It entered into effect 1 December and changes the legal framework of the Union, amends its working methods and voting rules and defines new and more comprehensive powers. For the first time, tourism is mentioned in a treaty among the policy responsibilities of the Union’s institutions. 

HOTREC, the European trade association that represents 39 national hospitality associations in 24 countries across Europe, stressed in an official note that “hospitality business trends reported across Europe are still very worrying and recovery is currently not in sight in many Member States. Investment projects are frozen, access to credit almost evaporated and demand is plunging.”

HOTREC asked for a shift in EU policies to hasten the recovery. During the last Assembly, HOTREC President Kent Nyström called on the EU and the member states to restore a favourable regulatory environment instead of imposing additional burdens.

Lisbon Treaty changes

According to HOTREC, the sector, which has been reached by an increasing number of EU rules and regulation over the years, needs “pro-business policies, better regulation and burden reductions.”

The Lisbon Treaty offers new instruments to implement policies that impact the hotel industry.

“We have already defined the lines of development in the ‘Agenda for a sustainable and competitive European Tourism’ and we are already operating with a view to future changes,” said Francesco Ianniello, head of the tourism unit at the EU’s Directorate General for Enterprise and Industry. “The most important thing that comes for the Lisbon Treaty is that the decisions (in the field of tourism) will be taken by majority of votes instead by unanimity. Decision making will be easier and faster.”
 
The hope of Marguerite Sequaris, HOTREC’s CEO, is that the Treaty, “giving competences in relation to tourism (to the Union) that has to support the tourist policies of the member states, will give some impetus to put tourism higher on the agenda of the European institutions.”

Legislation’s impact

Marguerite Sequaris

“We have a lot of European legislation affecting our industry,” she said. “For example, taxation. Of course (rules) on (value-added taxes) have an impact also on hotel and restaurants as well as regulations on food labelling or on smoking in public places. But all those measures are not designed for tourism specifically. We have been touched by all sorts of EU legislation, and now we hope that something could be done in the field of tourism per se.

“We count a lot on the new commissioner, Antonio Tajani,” she continued. “He is only designated, but assuming that Mr. Tajani becomes commissioner in charge of Enterprises and Industry, we condone him to make use of those new competences to take tourism into account more seriously.” 

Tourism conference

HOTREC is waiting for the Parliament’s approval of the new commission, but it already is asking Tajani for a meeting.

“The first thing I will tell him is that there are some many measures impacting on our industry,” Sequaris said. “We would really call for a better analysis when (the legislation) is still at the stage of proposal. For each proposal, the commission does impact assessments, which means measuring the impact on businesses, but so far this has not been done properly for our sector. This is our very first demand.”

According to HOTREC, the second step is the arrangement of a general conference on tourism. It is vital “to see exactly where tourism stands at the moment, to take a picture of the situation of an industry that has extremely suffered because of the crisis and also a picture of all EU measures affecting tourism, specifically hospitality. Then, what has to be done can be defined,” Sequaris said. 

Promoting Europe

European hoteliers believe one of the EU's most important tasks is the promotion of Europe as tourist destination, especially with regard to emerging markets like India or China. This is what the commission’s Tourism Unit is trying to do in some specific fields.

“Until now, we didn’t act by means of regulations but by preparatory actions (of policies) whose aim is to improve tourism in lower seasons and in marginalize territories,” Ianniello said. “We are carrying out actions based on the spread of best practices among operators.”

The weakness of hospitality sector is based on two main problems, according to Ianniello: The seasonality of tourism flows and the concentration in few, main destinations, like the big cities. This means that properties are not fully used and developed.

“(This is why) we launched a project like Eden, European Destinations of Excellence, a competition whose aim is of boosting emerging tourist destinations that respect standards of sustainability,” Ianniello said.
 
Regarding the effort of demand deseasonalization, the European Commission is working through a pilot project called Calypso. Defined along the same line of a Spanish programme, “Calypso wants to develop interchanges among tourists with special needs, like seniors, young people or disabled persons during the low seasons. We have arranged conferences in different countries, and we hope to be able to launch the tests in March. Hoteliers should be the first beneficiaries.”        

If the Tourism Unit’s projects are developed mainly to sustain the internal demand, a relevant obstacle remains on the side of flows coming from third-party countries.

“(It is necessary) to facilitate the visas’ procedures because this can be a big deterrent for travellers,” Sequaris said. “Coming to Europe can be very complicated. The problem is that (this matter) is not fully harmonized and it depends on the agreements with the third-countries. It is still a kind of patchwork and the procedures somewhere are still quite complicated.”

Food labelling

Another matter of debate is food labelling. Even if this issue seems not to be directly related to hotel industry, it is becoming a relevant hoteliers’ bugbear because of a proposal that could significantly change hotel food management.

“Last year the commission issued a proposal that requires every restaurant to give a lot of details about prepared food, like number of calories, ingredients, all sorts of elements, allergens,” Sequaris said. “We believe that this is absolutely not feasible for restaurants that go every day to the market, but only in places where what is offered is standardized food. If you cook on a daily basis, this is crazy, this is impossible. And even with regard to allergens, cross-contamination can’t be avoided.”

The consequences could be a rising use of prepackaged food to the detriment of traditional gastronomy.