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

8 withdraw from a contract if a rented object had been damaged due to force majeure (Art. 617(2) of the Obligations Code). However, this provision could only be used by analogy. It is also worth mentioning that, according to the Slovenian customary law in the field of hospitality (“ Posebne uzance v gostinstvu ”), there is a special provision which enables a hotel guest to withdraw from a contract anytime, due to force majeure, and to get reimbursed without obligation to pay compensation. Thus, it seems that a contract with a non-refundable clause, which does not exempt force majeure situations, as far as the right to reimbursement is concerned, places the consumer in a legal situation less favourable than that provided for by the Slovenian law. This supports the view that such a contract term causes a significant imbalance in the parties’ rights and obligations arising under the contract and could, therefore, be considered unfair. Finally, one might ask if there is a justifiable reason to treat an independent traveller differently from a package traveller when it comes to the withdrawal from a contract due to force majeure. Indeed the prices of package travel are usually higher than the prices for the same travel booked by themselves. One might argue that this difference also covers the additional security that the traveller gets when booking with the travel agency. However, it is questionable whether this argument is sufficient to justify the reimbursement in full of a traveller who cancels a package travel for coronavirus-related reasons, while, conversely, an independent traveller would (according to a contract term) lose the whole amount of money paid for the cancelled service.