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

receive any audience (as happened with the New Year’s Concert 2021) it seems to be a rather typical case of frustration of purpose or discontinuation of the basis of the transaction. The same applies to language holidays when the purpose of the accommodation is the attendance of a language course which cannot take place because of COVID-19 restrictions. As a result it seems rather likely that in these cases the organiser will be entitled to withdraw from the accommodation reservation contract and recover the money paid to the hotel operator. With regard to the contract of carriage, it seems far more difficult to refer to the doctrine of frustration of purpose or discontinuation of the basis of the transaction as air carriage contracts usually are not based on a mutual understanding of the parties that a certain event will take place or that a certain services will be available at the destination. Again, there may be exemptions when a flight was expressly chartered for one of these purposes. 6. Conclusions Although both, package organisers and travel service suppliers, are affected by the pandemic to a similar extent it seems that struggling for their own economic survival they often do not act as partners in the crisis but as opponents – with the one being in the better postition who still disposes of the money. Depending on the particular impact of the pandemic or related bans or restrictions, the doctrine of frustration of purpose or discontinuation of the basis of the transaction which is acknowledged in many different jurisdictions may serve as a basis for package organisers to terminate their contracts with particular suppliers and recover the money paid to them as a compensation for their obligation to reimburse the travellers. In practice, according to my experiences, suppliers are rather reluctant to accept such claims. The prospects of success must be examined on a case-by-case basis. The case constellations mentioned above are only intended as examples of the considerations that can be made. Of course, practice will not be limited to these constellations, but there will often be a wide variety of variants and combinations of the scenarios mentioned.