Regulating practices for fair competition between all actors of the accommodation sector

The Executive Board of the International Hotel and Restaurant Association (IH&RA) has given a large part of its debates to the global phenomenon of the pseudo-collaborative economy, which has negative effects on the hospitality industry as well as neighborhoods and cities.

The Board gathered around its President, Dr. Ghassan Aidi, along with Board members from China, Argentina, Switzerland, Spain, Croatia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Canada, the USA, as the Mediterranean Association of Hotels and Restaurants (MH&RA) meeting was held in the Union of Trades and Of the Hospitality Industries’ (UMIH’s) offices.

IHRA’s President reminded everybody that the first meeting of IHRA after the World War II was in this room of the UMIH head office in 1947.

The French advances, presented by UMIH, were welcomed by the IH&RA, which considers that the balance found in France with the law LEMAIRE (registration number, identification of the renter’s status, control of the length of stay with 120 days for the main residences), the 2017 Finances Act (automatic income transmission), and the Social Security Finance Law 2017 (social contributions for incomes above 23,000 €) is a real innovation, and very promising.

“The measures adopted by France are major steps towards greater transparency. If fully implemented and enforceable by the government, France will be an example to follow for many countries that are now trying to regulate these practices for fair competition between all actors of the accommodation sector. These decrees must be published as soon as possible. This will enable the global hospitality industry, which employs and recruits millions of employees every day, to offer equivalent solutions to these global platforms such as Airbnb or HomeAway. We are the last barrier against the poverty by training, hiring, recruiting thousands of people every day, and paying competitive wages,” said Dr. Ghassan AIDI, President of IH&RA.

“[We are] very pleased to welcome the hoteliers and restaurateurs from all over the world for the third time at UMIH’s offices and to share with them the same visions of the future of the profession,” Roland Heguy, Confederal President of UMIH, who deplored “the blocking of the publication of decrees while the vote was unanimous in Parliament. France has the opportunity to show the way to transparent information for the customer, [and] fair competition while respecting the existing regulations. Let’s not pass [this] by.”

Two decrees are particularly expected by the profession, they aim to apply two articles of the law LEMAIRE:

• Article 49 on the identification of the renter (private/professional) which will appear on the advertisement, thus enabling the consumer to distinguish between the actual collaborative activity and the industrial activity, and the municipalities to reinforce their controls.

• Article 51 on the registration of rentals that the municipalities may decide to set up and the registration number to appear on the advertisements. This registration number will allow the mayors to have an overall knowledge of the tourism offer and to ensure an effective control of the rentals.