MODERNISATION OF INFORMATION REQUIREMENTS FOR CONSUMERS may have a negative impact on the functioning of the online tourism services market. Such undesirable effects for consumers, as well as for service providers, may be caused by numerous deficiencies when it comes to the provision of information, such as misleading and/or fake reviews, no time limits on reviews, lack of information of the scoring or rating systems, lack of information on platform practices related to search results, lack of verification of reviews and reviewers and the lack of transparency on commercial relationships between reviewers and platforms.33 Many of the problems connected with the transparency of the tourism markets have already been confirmed in practice on EU-wide screening websites (‘sweeps’34) of 2021 coordinated by the European Commission. A motive for the annual sweep were the results of the Market Monitor Survey of 2020 showing that as many as 71% of consumers consider reviews as very important when choosing their holiday accommodation. The fact that decisions are made on the basis of reviews requires special acting by platform operators when processing and posting consumer reviews. Insufficiently transparent reviews may lead to misleading practice when booking online tourism services. Within the screening process, 223 major websites from 26 EU Member States, Island and Norway were checked. The results show that at least 55% of the checked websites have potentially violated the EU rules on unfair commercal practice requiring that truthful information is presented to consumers to allow for their informed choices. For the remaining 18% of websites, the authorities also expressed serious doubts. Major irregularities were detected where platforms, by presenting the obtained reviews, had failed to carry out preliminary procedures to make sure that the reviews were authentic, or they did not inform the consumers about the way the reviews had been collected in the first place, as well as how they managed to block fake 33 See: Study, 2014, pp. 125, 126, 127; Study/Final Report/2018, pp. 45-59; Study, 2020, pp. 44-52. 34 Investigations (‘sweeps’) are carried out on the basis of Art. 29 Regulation (EU) 2017/2394 on cooperation between national authorities responsible for the enforcement of consumer protection laws. ‘Sweeps’ means concerted investigations of consumer markets through simultaneous coordinated control actions to check compliance with, or to detect infringements of, Union laws that protect consumers’ interests (Art. 3 point 16, Regulation 2017/2394).
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