Collective Commentary about the New Package Travel Directive

1048 COLLECTIVE COMMENTARY ABOUT THE NEW PACKAGE TRAVEL DIRECTIVE 2. LOOKING BACK A main change compared to the previous Act on Travel Agreements (Articles 7:500 to 7:513 (former) DCC) is that the legislator has now almost verbatim 15 used the definition of (travel) organiser 16 (Article 7:500(h) DCC) from the Directive. The current definition of organiser is as follows: “handelaar die pakketreizen samenstelt en deze rechtstreeks dan wel via of samen met een andere handelaar aanbiedt, of de handelaar die de gegevens van de reiziger aan een andere handelaar verstrekt overeenkomstig hetgeen is bepaald in onderdeel b, onder ii), 5°”. “trader which combines travel packages and offers these directly or through or together with another trader, or the trader who transmits the data of the traveller to another trader in accordance with the provisions of section b(ii)(5)”. The fact that the Dutch Act in terms of the definition is virtually in line with the Directive is in itself a major improvement compared to the definition of travel organiser used until 1 July 2018. The Dutch legislator was quite stubborn during the implementation of the (old) Directive 90/314/EEC back in 1992 and developed the following definition (which deviated from the definition of travel organiser in the Directive on Package Travel of 1990): “Travel organiser: any party offering pre-organised trips to the public or a group of persons in its own name as part of its business activities.”. This Dutch definition differed substantially from the definition in the old Directive of 1990. In this Directive, the organiser was defined as “ the person who, other than occasionally, organises packages and sells or offers them for sale, whether directly or through a retailer ”. The definition of package (travel) also differed in the Dutch Act. The Dutch government did not consider it necessary at the time to include that the package had to be offered for a joint price, as prescribed by the Directive. 15 However, the Dutch translation of the Directive refers to “purchase”. But a service, including a travel service, cannot be “purchased” pursuant to Dutch legislation. For this reason, the Dutch Act uses “offered and accepted”, rather than “purchase”. 16 The word “travel” is between parenthesis as the Directive and the Act no longer refer to a “travel organiser”, but an “organiser”. However, the word “travel organiser” is so common, and we believe more accurately indicates which party it concerns, we will use the word “travel organiser” more often than the neutral word “organiser”.