Legality of Political and Ethical Consumerism in Tourism: Considerations from an E.U. Competition Law Perspective

Abstract

Political or ethical activism associated with tourism consumption receives hardly any attention from a legal perspective. As such activities may constitute a legal infringement of competition, (potential) activists, particularly companies engaging in such activism, need to be aware of the potential risk of being subject to legal prosecution, undermining the actual goals of their activism. Vice versa, companies, destinations or other tourism entities negatively affected by activism may claim such a behaviour to be deemed illegal. Such illegality may originate from a competition's abusive behaviour or unfair commercial practice. For either of those to be applicable, actors taking part or calling for political or ethical induced consumption need at least to have an indirect economic interest in the tourism market and, similar to the activism targets, need to be considered an economic entity. This also applies to destinations not considering themselves economic entities, despite being commercially active. In general, consumption activism will be deemed illegal if used or called for by a dominant market position. Without market dominance, activism activities are deemed commercially unfair unless the originator of activism has a legitimate reason protected by constitutional rights.