Standards Development

Scope

This document provides guidelines on how to provide online accommodation booking and related services for online accommodation booking platforms.

This document is applicable to the platform providing online accommodation booking and related services.

Purpose

-Putting forward the key elements that the online accommodation booking platform needs to pay attention to in terms of service assurance and service provision and giving corresponding guidance to ensure that the platform has sufficient capacity to provide online accommodation booking services.

-To further identify the relationship and responsibilities among the online accommodation booking platform operators, accommodation service providers and consumers. Ensure that the rights and interests of consumers and service providers are reasonably protected in the era of platform economy and promote the mutual trust mechanism among three parties.

-To deal with the problems in online accommodation booking industry, such as verification of service provider's identity and capability, reservation changing and cancellation, after-sales service, dispute resolution and other outstanding issues to provide standardized solutions.

-To provide guidance for online accommodation booking platforms on how to deal with the security and privacy protection issues that consumers care about, to ensure that the needs of consumers are satisfied, and the platform’s operation are standardized.

-To provide the service quality management and improvement path of online accommodation booking service platform and promote the orderly and sustainable development of online accommodation booking service industry.

-Filling in the blanks in the international standards of the online accommodation booking industry. To enrich the existing tourism and related service standards, and promote the development of standardized activities in the online accommodation booking industry.

Justification:

1. In practice, online accommodation booking platforms have different operating models and lack uniform guidance. That is not conducive to the recovery of the global tourism industry that has been stagnant due to Covid-19. In recent years, online accommodation booking market has continually expanded. According to the data gathered by Condor Ferries, it is estimated that 57% of accommodation booking has been made online. By 2022, the global online accommodation booking market will exceed US$174 million, and by 2023 there will be 700 million people book hotel rooms online.

Since a specific company may have different operating models in different countries and different companies in a specific country may also have different operating models, it may make users confused when they use the same platform in different regions or use different platforms in the same region.

Especially in cross-border travelling, consumers may take their own country's terms or policies as the destination countries’, which may lead to conflicts and disputes.

Therefore, devising a global standard to provide norms for online accommodation booking industry is a necessity to promote the development of the industry around the world.

2. Consumers will encounter many problems when using the platform, and they need guidelines to solve these problems.

The verification of accommodation providers conducted by platforms is not up to standard, resulting in the failure of providing the promised services, thus causing a large number of consumer disputes. For example, no room on arrival, the actual closed hotel can still be booked on the platform, the service description is seriously inconsistent with the actual service, etc.

An important reason for these problems is the unclear definition of the responsibilities of the platform, the service provider, and the consumer, resulting in a responsibility vacuum zone between the three.

The proposal defines the responsibilities of platform, service providers and consumers. And effectively identifies the problems frequently encountered by consumers in the process of using the platform, as well as guarantees consumers' booking and check-in process going well.

3. In terms of existing standards, there is currently a lack of international standards related to online accommodation booking platforms.

ISO/TC 228 has developed a series of tourism and related service standards, but it’s mainly about traditional tourism services rather than V01/2020 Form 4:

New work item proposal (NP) Page 10 online accommodation booking platform services. As more and more booking services move online, online booking services have become an integral part of the whole tourism services.

Detailed regulations on offline facilities and services, but failure to set standards for supporting online booking platforms will result in asymmetry in the development of the industry and affect the sustainable development of the industry. China has already developed association standards for online accommodation booking platforms. On this basis, this proposal will draw on the practice of online accommodation booking platform services in other countries and develop systematic and guiding international standards.

4. The proposal systematically combs the operating process and service content of the online accommodation booking platform and provides guidance for online accommodation booking platforms on how to address important issues. Especially in solving the key problems of information security, privacy protection, information verification, capital security, refund policy, platform responsibility and so on, it provides the action plan to help the platform improve the operation system.

The proposal can effectively guarantee equal dialogue between stakeholders and promote the huge and growing market of online accommodation booking to have a standardized and sustainable development.