TOUR GUIDE AND INTERPRETER ACTIVITY (Advisory opinion)
PRESS RELEASE
The Italian Competition Authority submitted an advisory opinion to the Prime Minister and the Presidents of Regional Councils with regard to limitations on competition deriving from certain provisions set forth in the regional laws concerning the tour guide and interpreter activity. The Authority therefore expressed the hope that such provisions would be reviewed.
The general principles on these professional activities are contained in Law no. 217/83 providing for measures to be taken to develop and qualify tourism. Such a law does not set out provisions in order to fix service price. By contrast, certain regions adopted their own laws on this matter and provided tariff fixing mechanisms, whose application is compulsory, in some cases both at the minimum and maximum level, in other cases only at the maximum level. Most regions fix tariffs through an administrative proceeding, during which professional associations are summoned to express their opinions. In other regions, tariffs are fixed by associations directly.
The Authority found that this system neither met the need to guarantee service quality, nor led automatically to a major professional correctness of operators towards customers.
In particular, with respect to minimum tariffs, the Authority felt that they did not ensure a correlation between fixed price levels and adequate quality of supplied services.
In regard to the maximum tariffs, the Authority deemed that they could be viewed as being conducive to reducing consumer price only in presence of very special circumstances (which did not occur, in this case). To this end, it would be preferable that public administrations introduce means aimed at guaranteeing market transparency and disseminating information of conditions applied by operators.
Indeed, taking into account the local enforcement of one of the regional laws providing the tariff fixing only at the maximum level - namely, Emilia-Romagna region - it emerged that, following the decisions taken by the administrations, the fixed tariffs are considered as the only reference point to operators. In this way, even in the regions where laws seem to provide for exclusively maximum tariffs, the decision-making process can have as similar effects as those deriving from laws providing for minimum or fixed tariffs, so as to fulfill only the needs of the operators involved.
Lastly, the Authority considered that the provisions contained in certain regional laws, which submit the arrangement of examinations to carry out the guide and interpreter activity to a decision of public administrations and professional associations, are unjustified, on the basis of opportunity evaluations concerning the market situation. Indeed, the predetermination of the equilibrium between demand and supply, by limiting the number of operators, reduces the overall volume of activity and, by lowering the competitive pressure, discourages operators from improving conditions, both in quality and price, of services supplied to consumers.