Tourism Law in Europe

service normally provided for remuneration, at a distance, by electronic means and at the individual request of a recipient of services’. What is the service? Intermediation: an intermediation service which, by means of an electronic platform, is intended to connect, for remuneration, potential guests with professional or non-professional hosts offering short-term accommodation, while also providing a certain number of services ancillary to that intermediation service, With this, the CJEU understands that the Airbnb platform provides an intermediary service only and not the provision of the underlying service. Electronic platform must be classified as an ‘information society service’ under Directive on electronic commerce (Directive 2000/31). What does it mean? In such a case, collaborative platforms could be subject only to Directive on electronic commerce among other regulations, obviously, but not to the sectoral regulations of the underlying service provided. Therefore, questions such as: can the platform that intermediates in the vacation rental be required to control the legality of the accommodation offered and to eliminate the advertisements without registration number, as required by the tourist regulations of a country other than the that the platform has its registered office? will have a response conditioned by the nature of digital platforms and as platforms such as Airbnb are mere service providers, the provisions of the Directive on electronic commerce (Directive 2000/31) apply to them. In this sense, the application of art. 14 Directive on electronic commerce (Directive 2000/31) determines the exemption from liability for the content it stores, under certain conditions. Article 14 Hosting 1. Where an information society service is provided that consists of the storage of information provided by a recipient of the service, Member States shall ensure that the service provider is not liable for the information stored at the request of a recipient of the service, on condition that: