Two Years of the DMA - What Europe's Digital Regulation Actually Means For Your Business

Europe's landmark regulation is nearly two years old. Here's why every tour operator, activity provider, cultural site, museum and local experience business in Europe should know what it is.

Picture this. A traveller lands in Barcelona on a Friday afternoon. Excited, curious, phone in hand. She opens Google and types: "best food tours in Barcelona."

What does she see? Not your lovingly crafted local tour. Not the small family business you've spent years building. She sees a Google-designed carousel - an algorithm-powered box that sits above every other result on the page. Some of those listings paid to be there. Others got there because Google decided they should. Either way, the rules governing that decision just changed significantly - and most experience creators don't know it yet.

That carousel isn't neutral. It's a product. And for two years now, a piece of European regulation called the Digital Markets Act — the DMA — has been trying to change exactly that.

So: what is it, why does it matter for your business, and what has actually happened so far?

First, what is the DMA?

The Digital Markets Act is the EU's regulation for the platforms that control how most people discover most things online. We're talking about Google, Meta (Instagram and Facebook), Apple, Amazon - the handful of giants that act as the front door to the internet for billions of people across the world. 

The regulation calls these companies gatekeepers. When you rely on Google to be found, or on Instagram to build an audience, those companies are sitting between you and your customer. The DMA says: that's fine, but you cannot use that position to give yourself an unfair advantage.

In plain terms, the DMA tells gatekeepers:

• You cannot promote your own products above everyone else's in your search results

• You cannot use data from the businesses on your platform to compete against them

• You cannot lock businesses and consumers into your ecosystem without a fair alternative

• You must allow competitors a genuine chance to reach the same audiences

It does not ban advertising. It does not stop Google from being a search engine. It simply says: if you control the gate, you must not also rig the game.

Why should you — a tour operator, an experience provider, a cultural site — care?

Because the platforms the DMA targets are the same ones that determine whether travellers find you or find someone else.

Think about how your customers discover you. Someone searches "kayaking tours in the Zadar." Someone else scrolls Instagram looking for things to do in Lisbon. A couple planning their Tuscany trip opens Google Maps and types "cooking class near Siena."

In every one of those moments, a gatekeeper is in the room. And until the DMA came along, that gatekeeper was also a competitor — running its own discovery products, promoting its own results, and collecting fees from the intermediaries it chose to highlight, all while you paid to play.

The experience sector — tours, activities, cultural sites, landmarks, heritage institutions, local guides, wellness providers, food experiences — is particularly exposed here. For a hotel, losing 5% of Google traffic is painful. For a small experience operator who may have no other significant channel, what happens in search results isn't a technical question. It's a survival one. 

So what has actually changed in two years?

Honestly? Less than the law promised, yet more than its critics predicted. 

The enforcement is real. In April 2025, Apple and Meta became the first companies fined under the DMA — €500 million and €200 million respectively. In March 2025, the European Commission has opened formal investigations into Google's search compliance so change at platform level is still slow and contested.

Every day enforcement remains incomplete is another day that the practices the law was designed to address continue unchecked — distorting how travellers discover experiences, undermining fair competition, and eroding the trust that Europe's digital single market depends on. A regulation that is not enforced is not a regulation. It is a promise — and right now, that promise is being tested.

The question is whether the experience sector shows up to hold it accountable.

The experience economy deserves a seat at this table

The experience economy is Europe's most diverse, most local, most culturally rich tourism sector. It is also, right now, one of the least represented in the digital policy conversations that shape how travellers find it.

Cultural sites, independent guides, food experience operators, local cooperatives - these businesses make Europe worth visiting. They also tend to be micro-businesses with no marketing department, no compliance team, and no time to follow regulatory proceedings in Brussels.

The experience sector is also starting from a different place than hotels or airlines, which have spent years building direct booking infrastructure, industry associations, and rate strategies. Most experience providers haven't had to think about any of that — and that means the DMA's benefits will not arrive automatically. That's not a weakness, it's context and it's exactly the gap the European Experience Alliance is here to close and DMA enforcement cannot wait.

In our next post, we move from understanding the DMA to acting on it — with a practical look at what experience providers can do right now to ensure that when Brussels acts, the experience sector's voice is already in the room.