In a letter to cabinet informateur Ronald Plasterk, the ANVR will argue for less administrative regulatory burden for the travel sector. “This regulatory burden has now reached an unacceptable height,” said ANVR director Frank Oostdam on Monday evening during the New Year’s reception that took place for the first time in the Jaarbeurs in Utrecht, as the start of the Dutch Travel Week. The new-style meeting was attended by around 200 industry peers. Oostdam cited the ‘totally unworkable DAC7 regulations’ as an example. The DAC7 directive is a new European rule that requires companies that sell via a website to report detailed information about their suppliers to the tax authorities. This also applies to travel companies. This creates a lot of extra work for companies. ‘For the time being, they are still discussing the constitution in The Hague, but then our letter is already there,’ said Oostdam, who emphasized the importance of Article 22 of the constitution. ‘It stipulates, among other things, that the government must create conditions for the development of leisure activities. I hope that a new coalition will act accordingly.’ Positive In addition, the ANVR, as the representative of the travel sector, will once again use the letter to the informateur to draw attention to the positive impact of tourism and travel. ‘The focus is usually on the negative aspects, but the positive sound is not heard,’ says Oostdam. ‘On the one hand, we are certainly not running away from our responsibility in the field of climate and sustainability, but on the other hand, tourism and travel also have a major positive impact on our society. Think of employment, economic contribution, well-being and health.’ According to Oostdam, the ANVR will ‘naturally’ get to work on the implementation of the newly formulated sustainability vision. The first steps have already been taken. The vision should be seen as an ambitious plan, with which the travel industry will give direction to a transition to a more sustainable, future-proof travel sector by 2050. ‘We already have quite a few concrete plans in preparation within our steering group. We expect to be able to start working on (part of) those plans around the summer. In this way, we will soon be able to indicate to everyone who wants to, from government and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to public opinion, exactly what they can expect from us, how we as a travel sector see our role, what we see as our responsibility and what we do not. And what we want to be judged on and what we don’t.’ Earlier on Monday, the ANVR had already announced that 2024 may be The best year for travel ever becomes. Photo: AMVR director Frank Oostdam with chairman Arjan Kers.
