Tourism Law in Europe

4 The tourism is also recognised as one of the economic activities comprising different type of services, such as transport, accommodation, information etc. The main aim of such economic activity is to satisfy persons’ needs by exercising his or her right to travel. Altogether the tourism has particular impact to socio-cultural and environmental frame of each country. Therefore, the complexity is the main feature of tourism. The law shall take into account this peculiarity of tourism and see this area as comprising various and different aspects of people’s life. Consequently, the tourism law is a set of rules (legal norms) regulating relationship between various legal subjects in order to ensure the person’s right to travel. The purpose of tourism legislation is to provide a regulatory framework for the proper development and management of tourism activities. Since the tourism activity as an economic activity has its impact to socio-cultural and environmental area of life, the regulation should help to conserve national resources and preserve cultural traditions. Considering all these aspects, the tourism law may be defined as a set of legal norms regulating conditions for the provision and promotion of tourism activity (tourism services) which aim is to safeguard the rights of tourists’ and other public interests related to social, cultural and environmental aspects of society. That leads to the conclusion that tourism law is not separate branch of law but rather institute comprising legal norms of different branches of law. Although there are thoughts in Lithuanian legal doctrine that tourism law may gradually transform into an independent branch of law 13 , however, the complexity of tourism law allows to doubt whether there is enough justification for such ideas. Moreover, the life of society has become more and more complex and sophisticated, that sometimes it is (and we believe will be in the future) difficult to frame legal relationships into classical approach of law and to find its place in the traditional branches of law. Therefore, it is likely, that such institutes as tourism law will maintain its diversity character and therefore, its multi-disciplinarity. The main legal background for all spheres of life is the Constitution of Republic of Lithuania. The Constitution does not refer explicitly to the matters of tourism. However, many 13 Salvija Kalvalnė; Edmundas Rusinas. Legal Regulation of Tourism at national, international and supranational level. Jurisprudence, 2017, No 24 (2), p 409-428.