Collective Commentary about the New Package Travel Directive

BULGARIA | NANCHO NANCHEV 701 him directly or through travel agents 14 . A detailed addition to this provision points to the high attention to this category of passengers. All the complex of the definitions, the pre-contractual information to be provided before the travel, the content of the package travel contract and the documents to be supplied before the start of the package has been faithfully reproduced from Directive (EU) 2015/2302, very often literally 15 . Similarly, the possibilities of changing the package travel contract before the start of the package are mirrored in several consecutive provisions 16 . As the main importance of Directive (EU) 2015/2302 is to ensure additional legal protection for the consumers purchasing travel packages the provisions concerning the responsibility of the tour operators become of key significance. Art. 90 of the Bulgarian Tourism Act transpose the imperatives and the hypotheses of Art. 13 “Responsibility for the performance of the package” of Directive (EU) 2015/2302 widening significantly the scope of its applicability. In the Bulgarian version the tour operator is responsible not only for the performance of the travel services included in the package travel contract, as provided for in Art. 13 of Directive (EU) 2015/2302, but outright for the performance of the tourist services included in the package contract 17 . By way of interpretation it could be concluded that in fact the Bulgarian legislator followed the EU prototype having in mind the definition for travel service in Art. 3 (1) of Directive (EU) 2015/2302 which in its fourth component open this notion to “any other tourist service not intrinsically part of a travel service within the meaning” of the previous three components. Thus the Bulgarian text has chosen not only the wording but the substance in this part of the provision aimed to cover as much as possible tourist services. While for “tourist service” there is no definition in Directive (EU) 2015/2302, such a definition exists in the Bulgarian Tourism Act where it is divided into “basic travel services” (accommodation and transport) and “additional travel services” (services, related to trips, entertainment, events of cultural and knowledgeable nature, congress and business events etc.), an enumeration inevitably ending up in the generalizing “other services, offered, used by the tourists during their trip and stay” 18 . 14 Art. 79 (3) point 1 of the Tourism Act. 15 Respectively in § 1 of the Additional provisions, and in Art. 82 and Art. 84 of the Tourism Act. 16 Art. 86 – Art. 89 of the Tourism Act. 17 Art. 90 (1) of the Tourism Act. 18 § 1, points 69 and 70 of the Additional provisions to the Tourism Act.