Text tabled : A6-0399/2007

  Zita Pleštinská (PPE-DE), in writing. − (SK) With regard to the possibilities that new technologies offer the tourist industry, tourists are increasingly avoiding intermediaries and travel agents, and making tourist reservations, mainly for travel and accommodation, by electronic means.

Cases often arise where consumers are disappointed when they do not obtain the services for which they have paid in advance. I was recently informed about practices at the Victoria Garden Suites Hotel in Strasbourg, when Slovak tourists were downgraded from a three-star to a two-star hotel and treated as if they were second-class citizens. The hotel did not refund them the difference between the services they had paid for and those actually provided, although it was little enough to demand for this.

This development of the use of information technology for tourist services requires a consumer and personal data protection framework for electronic bookings. It is important that consumers receive information that is correct, not deceptive, and that is up-to-date and unambiguous. In the interests of consumer protection, certification of the sites that provide information and offer tourist services (reservation and payment) of an electronic nature would be helpful.

Nothing is worse for tourism than the dissatisfaction of European consumers, hence I have fully supported the report on ‘A renewed EU tourism policy: towards a stronger partnership for European tourism’, just as the rapporteur, Mr Costa, suggested, and I particularly identify with his focus on consumer protection.