The Legal Impacts of COVID-19 in the Travel, Tourism and Hospitality Industry

2  sellers of travel services are allowed to operate only online;  provision of accommodation is forbidden, with some exceptions; and  all persons are prohibited from moving and staying in any place outside their home, without respiratory protective equipment. The Czech Government is planning to gradually relax the restrictions, but we do not yet know when the borders will be open again, both for incoming and outgoing tourism. III. What Do the Limitations Mean for Czech Tour Operators? Both Czech incoming and outgoing tourism today equals zero, which leads to Czech tour operators having currently zero income today and experiencing uncertainty about the future. Unfortunately, the lack of income is only part of the problem. Czech tour operators are under constant pressure from travellers, who are asking for a full refund of their payments for travel packages. Czech tour operators have already utilised most of their financial resources to pay their partners at the destinations or the transport companies, partners who are paying back the Czech operators in credit vouchers. As an attorney working for many tour operators, the author of this article has come across the following question: In the current COVID-19 situation, do the tour operators have an obligation to refund all their customers? By trying to answer this question, three types of situations have been identified: 1. Clear situations; 2. Controversial situations; and 3. a combination of both. Which will be addressed throughout this section. III.1. What is a clear situation? The country or countries where the package travel shall be performed is in a quarantine and it is simply closed for travellers. In view of Article 12 of the 2015 Package Travel Directive (PTD), this situation is self-explanatory. When the destination is closed, and the services are not functioning, the tour operator cannot provide the services included in the package to the traveller. Hence, the tour operator shall terminate the package and refund all the money. If the tour operator does not terminate the contract, the traveller is also allowed to withdraw from the package tour, as the problem is obviously that the package tour cannot be performed at the destination as stipulated in the contract. III.2. What is a controversial situation? It is a situation, which, in the author’s opinion, goes beyond the reasoning of the creators of the Article 12 PTD, and, therefore, the right of the traveller for a full refund is under question. It is a situation when: