The European Commission proposed on 20/02 a set of voluntary European Tourism Quality Principles.
21 April 2014
The European Commission proposed on 20/02 a set of voluntary European Tourism Quality Principles.
European Commission Vice-President Antonio Tajani, Commissioner for Industry and Entrepreneurship commented: "Tourism service providers will be able to assure customers of the high quality of their services, which means a strong competitive advantage for businesses, especially SMEs. The current proposal represents an important tool for further promoting tourism, Europe's growth champion in the past five years. Promoting the high quality of European tourism services will contribute to improving tourism flows of travellers within the EU and from outside Europe. This complements other European initiatives which follow the same aim, such as visa facilitation for third-country tourists and branding Europe as a set of high-quality destinations."
The European Commission proposed a set of voluntary European Tourism Quality Principles to ensure that tourists travelling to other Member States or visiting our continent from third countries will get value for their money. These principles cover four main areas: staff training under the supervision of a quality coordinator, consumer satisfaction to ensure that tourist can rely on handling of their complaints, cleanliness and maintenance, and correctness and reliability of information in at least the most relevant foreign language. Such access to reliable and up-to-date information on the quality of tourism services enables tourists to differentiate among competing products, to make an informed choice and to overcome linguistic difficulties. Small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) will find it easier to emphasize that they are providing a high quality service by sticking to the principles. The proposal will therefore help SMEs which make up over 90% of the EU tourism sector.
