Tourism Law in Europe

1 Tourism Law in Europe: Lithuanian Perspective Danguolė Bublienė 1 Ieva Navickaitė-Sakalauskienė 2 1. Introduction; 2. The First Dimension of Tourism: Legal Regulation and Policy Formation of Tourism in Lithuania; 2.1. Legal regulation of tourism; 2.2. Tourism policy; 3. The Second Dimension of Tourism: Institutional Framework of Tourism in Lithuania; 4. The Third Dimension of Tourism: Tourism Services from the Service Providers’ and Tourists’ Perspective; 4.1. Tourist’s perspective; 4.2. Tourism services providers’ perspective; 5. Some Legislative Initiatives during COVID-19; 6. Conclusions. 1. Introduction The desire for travel away from home is inherent in humans. Long time ago being a privilege, today travelling is available almost to everyone, as the international mass tourism emerged and expanded in Europe after the World War II. Later the tourism sector experienced the huge impact of e-commerce, as travel and tourism products have become one of the most traded items on the internet. The European Union (EU) welcomed 500 million tourist arrivals (overnight tourists) in 2016. Six out of ten EU residents made one or more trips in 2015 3 . The numbers had a tendency to increase. It is estimated that 64.1 % of the EU’s population aged 15 or over took part in tourism for personal purposes in 2018 4 . In the European Union, tourism contributes 10% to EU GDP and creates jobs for 26 million people – through its direct, indirect and induced effects in the economy – in particular for young people, women 1 Assistant Professor at Vilnius University. 2 Lecturer at Mykolas Romeris University. 3 UNWO. European Union Tourism Trends, p. 9; available in https://www.e- unwto.org/doi/pdf/10.18111/9789284419470. 4 Statistical data available i n https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Tourism_statistics.