3 February 2023: ERA recently attended a webinar hosted by ECTAA focussed on the presentation of the new Code of Conduct on data sharing in tourism, along with other stakeholders from the European Tourism Manifesto alliance. The Code aims to establish key principles to be respected in future EU tourism data space and should be adopted by end of February 2023.

As stated in the EC Transition Pathway for Tourism released in 2022, a key factor to boost competitiveness and innovation in tourism services is making better and more innovative use of data. This requires creating data sharing practices and agreement models that comply with the necessary privacy rules and respect the legitimate commercial interests of each partner. As a result, under topic 9 of the report, 'Data-driven tourism services',  the European Commission called for “stakeholder cooperation to agree on common practices (Code of Conduct) and to actively share tourism-related data in a European Tourism Data Space.”

The EC invited a group of organisations from both the private and public sectors to prepare a proposal for a Code of Conduct and to share it with stakeholders. The European Travel Commission (ETC), European Travel Agents’ and Tour Operators’ Association (ECTAA), Eurocities and EU Travel Tech agreed to join efforts and work together with the support of DG GROW.

By raising awareness about the challenges and opportunities of data management, casting light on the main principles as well as on the policy and regulatory developments for sharing B2B, B2G, and G2G data, the Code of Conduct places itself as the first step towards the creation of an EU data space for tourism. It aims at:

• Explaining the concepts and building trust between relevant tourism stakeholders
• Providing strategic support to stakeholders for reciprocal profits in data sharing partnership in the tourism industry
• Fostering the EU’s initiative to establish a European strategy for data sharing guidelines and principles
• Ensuring a level playing field for the public and private sector in data sharing
• Fostering data sharing in the tourism sector within the EU
• Setting the appropriate conditions for a successful adoption and use of the European Tourism Data Space being currently developed

The Code of Conduct on data sharing in tourism is a non-binding agreement. It does not specify the type of data that can be subject to a data sharing agreement nor in which form data would be shared. These elements are to be defined as part of the voluntary contractual agreement between the parties.

It was stated by the founding organisations during the exchanges that the Code could evolve in the future if necessary.

The draft of the Code is available for download at the top of this page, for ERA members only.