Sustainable Tourism Law

206 SUSTAINABLE TOURISM LAW With the aim of applying it exceptionally during the 22 nd General Assembly session when only the UNWTO Framework Convention on Tourism Ethics was approved, the guidelines were adopted in order to provide legal certainty during the process of observation, analysis, finalization and, eventually, to approve the text 14 . As far as the draft Convention on the Protection of Tourists and on the Rights and Obligations of Tourism Service Providers is concerned, based on the experience and results obtained during the 22 nd session of General Assembly, the Executive Council might take into consideration the option to include the special Guidelines as an attachment of the General Assembly internal regulation, anticipating the potential future approval of a project on an International Treaty 15 . In conclusion, it should be highlighted that the UNWTOGeneral Secretariat, with the purpose of safeguarding the internal coherence of the process, has conveniently arranged for the harmonization of the text of the draft framework Convention on Tourism Ethics and the draft Convention on the Protection of Tourists, specifically on sections dealing with the Conference of the Member States and final provisions. II. THE DRAFT CONVENTION The latest version of the draft Convention on the Protection of Tourists and on the Rights and Obligations of Tourism Service Providers 16 is the final result of the long preliminary activity carried out by the Working Group consisting of Member States, international organizations and other stakeholders; it was created by the UNWTO Executive Council in October 2010 with the aim of defining the range and the level of legal tools to be proposed in order to introduce new international rules on tourism protection 17 . 14 In particular, it was a question of guaranteeing a viable and efficient procedure for the General Assembly’s examination of any comments and proposals for changes made by the Member States to the draft texts of international conventions, in order to establish the final text on which to commit the will of the States, besides disciplining the modalities of approval of the text; see Item 7 of the provisional agenda for the draft International Convention on the Protection of Tourists and the Rights and Obligations of Tourism Service Providers submitted to the 29th Joint Meeting in Chittagong, Bangladesh on 17 May 2017, doc. CAP/CSA/29/7_Draft Convention_Protection of Tourists. 15 In this perspective, the Executive Council may decide to submit the Guidelines to the approval of the 23rd session of the General Assembly, with any adjustments that may be necessary in light of the experience gained in the approval of the UNWTO Framework Convention on Tourism Ethics . 16 See the text prepared for the work of the 22nd biannual session of the 2017 General Assembly of the World Tourism Organization (doc. A/22/16 rev.2, of 23 August 2017), available in the original English version at http:// cf.cdn.unwto.org/sites/all/files/pdf/a22_16_ approval_or_adoption_of_the_convention_on_tourism_ethics_rev.2_en.pdf . 17 K.Tonner, Reviewing the protection of the tourist: passengers’ rights and package travel only or aTourist Services Directive? , in E. Buttigieg (ed.), Rights and Remedies for the Consumer in the European Union , University of Malta, 2012, p. 134 ss.