Il turismo e le regole. Riflessioni sul «Codice della normativa statale in tema di ordinamento e mercato del turismo»

Abstract

This article emphasizes the need for an order which governs the carrying out of the economic activities and is constituted by the legal rules guaranteeing the correct functioning of the market. Tourism, too, is a market, and as such it has been regulated during the years, but only in a sporadic and sectorial way. The «Tourism Code», as the new law has been named, aims at creating, coherently with the meaning of the word «Code», an organic normative corpus according to a choice of legislative politics which assigns to tourism both a strategic role for the national economic and occupational development, and an opportunity of international promotion for Italy. The Code’s ambitions clash however with root problems arising, on one side, from the possible violation of the Regions’ exclusive competence on the subject of tourism and, on the other, from the lack of real innovation in the Code itself. That is because we are very often in the presence of the reprocessing of pre-existing laws with reference to implementation decrees. Some important changes, however, can be found on the subject of the tourist’s protection, which results strengthened by provisions such as the possibility to pay reparations for ruined holiday damage and to settle disputes by resorting to the procedure of civil and commercial mediation; or the creation of an informative system («call center») and of the tourist’s counter to handle complaints as quickly as possible. In the end the article reviews the Code’s regulations relating to some key topics: accommodation facilities, tourism professions.