Legal notice and privacy policy for your hospitality website in Austria

Which laws govern the legal notice

Austria has no single legal notice law. Four sets of rules work together, each with its own scope. What they share is that they apply to every form of electronic content: your own website as much as Facebook, Instagram or an app. The Wirtschaftskammer (WKO, the Austrian Economic Chamber) sums them up in its fact sheet on the website legal notice, and in practice you put all the details on one single page.

If you are just planning your website, the guide to the content of a hospitality website lists the other pages a venue needs online. The founding steps themselves, from trade licence to chamber membership, are covered in Starting a hospitality business in Austria. If you sell tables, rooms or food online, also keep the accessibility act in mind, see Accessibility of your hospitality website.

Mandatory details under § 5 ECG

The E-Commerce-Gesetz applies to every website run as a business, whether you sell vouchers or only show opening hours and the menu. The details must be permanently, easily and directly accessible. The usual, proven solution is a "Legal notice" link in the footer of every page.

• Name or company name: for sole traders your first and last name, for companies the exact company name as registered in the Firmenbuch. The name of the venue alone is not enough.
• Geographic address of the establishment where authorities and courts can serve documents. A PO box is not enough.
• Contact details for quick, direct contact, in any case including an email address. The WKO recommends at least two channels, such as email and phone.
• Firmenbuch number and Firmenbuch court, if you are registered.
• Supervisory authority: for hospitality this is the trade authority, i.e. the Bezirkshauptmannschaft (district authority) or, in cities with their own statute, the Magistrat.
• Chamber and professional rules: membership of the Wirtschaftskammer, where applicable the professional title with the state that granted it, and a reference to the applicable rules with access to them.
• VAT number (UID), if you have one.

What hospitality businesses should add

Under the Gewerbeordnung, hospitality (Gastgewerbe) is a regulated trade. Your business is therefore supervised by the trade authority, and trade law rules apply that the legal notice has to point to. The WKO recommends naming the trade authority in every case. For a typical venue it looks like this:

Which Fachgruppe (trade group within the chamber) is responsible for you is shown in your entry in the WKO Firmen A-Z directory. Businesses with several licences, such as a hotel with a restaurant open to the public, name every Fachgruppe they belong to. How you obtain the trade licence itself is explained in the post on the hospitality licence.

Commercial register: § 14 UGB and § 63 GewO

The two provisions complement each other. § 14 UGB applies to businesses entered in the Firmenbuch, § 63 GewO to traders without an entry. The details overlap with the ECG, so one combined block is enough.

Disclosure under the Mediengesetz: small or large website

The Mediengesetz makes every website operator a media owner. How extensive the disclosure under § 25 MedienG has to be depends on the content. A website that only presents your venue, menu, opening hours, events and reservations is a small website. Under § 25 (5) MedienG it only needs the name or company name, business purpose and place of residence or registered office, which are in the legal notice anyway.

Things change as soon as content goes beyond promoting your own business and is suited to shaping public opinion. A blog commenting on hospitality politics, a regional online magazine on a hotel website or detailed excursion tips can make it a large website. Then you also need, among other things, a statement on the basic editorial line (the "Blattlinie") and, for companies, the ownership structure. The WKO explicitly names a hotel website with tips on regional sights as a borderline case and advises linking to suitable pages rather than writing your own articles.

Privacy policy: what a hospitality website has to cover

The legal notice says who you are. The privacy policy says what happens to your guests' data. Under Art. 13 GDPR you inform them about the controller, purposes, legal bases, recipients, retention period and their rights. The WKO advises a separate page rather than a paragraph in the legal notice, because the information has to be easy to find. Typical data flows on a hospitality website are:

• Online reservations: tools such as OpenTable, TheFork, Quandoo, resmio or aleno process names, phone numbers and often allergies or occasions. Name the provider as processor or separate controller and sign the necessary contracts. More in the guide Online reservations.
• Contact form and email: purpose, retention and deletion of enquiries, for example for parties or catering.
• Maps: an embedded Google map sends data to Google as soon as it loads. Load it only after a click or use a static map image with a link; OpenStreetMap is an alternative.
• Instagram and Facebook embeds: feeds and posts load content from Meta. A two-click solution helps here too.
• Fonts: Google Fonts loaded directly from Google's servers transmit the visitor's IP address. The wave of demand letters in Austria in 2022 showed how expensive that can get. Host fonts locally.
• Online ordering and vouchers: payment providers, delivery platforms such as Lieferando, Wolt or foodora, and your POS system.

Cookies and consent under § 165 TKG 2021

Under § 165 TKG 2021, information may only be stored on or read from your guests' devices if they have consented. The exception is what is strictly necessary for a service they explicitly requested to work, such as the shopping cart of a voucher shop. For analytics, marketing pixels, embedded videos or maps you usually need consent before anything loads.

The fewer third-party services a website loads, the shorter the banner and the privacy policy. A lean website without tracking often needs no cookie banner at all. That also helps loading times on mobile, which is exactly where guests search for your venue, as the guide to the Google Business Profile shows.

Sample legal notice and checklist

This is how the legal notice of a Gasthaus not entered in the Firmenbuch could be structured. The details are made up; copy the structure, not the content.

• Gasthaus zur Linde, owner: Maria Muster
• Business purpose: Gastgewerbe (hospitality)
• Location: Hauptstraße 1, 1234 Musterdorf, Austria
• Phone: +43 1 234 56 78, email: info@example.at
• VAT no. (UID): ATU12345678
• Member of the WKÖ and the Wirtschaftskammer Niederösterreich, Fachgruppe Gastronomie
• Professional rules: Gewerbeordnung, available at www.ris.bka.gv.at
• Trade authority: Bezirkshauptmannschaft Musterstadt