Collective Commentary about the New Package Travel Directive

1050 COLLECTIVE COMMENTARY ABOUT THE NEW PACKAGE TRAVEL DIRECTIVE different travel service providers on one booking confirmation without adopting the travel organiser liability, as long as they made sufficiently clear that they did not act in their own name. This form of Dynamic Packaging is no longer possible in the Netherlands without adopting the responsibility of the organiser 23 . As a result, the “own name criterion” did not reappear in the new Dutch legislation. If travel services are combined by one trader (possibly at the request of or in accordance with the choice of the traveller) and one agreement for all services is concluded, a form of package travel will exist (Article 7:500(b)(i) DCC). Even in the situation in which separate agreements are concluded with different travel service providers for these services, it will still be a situation of package travel if the services have been purchased from one location of sales and were selected before the traveller accepts to pay (Article 7:500(b)(ii)(i) DCC). 3. IMPLEMENTATION BY THE DUTCH LEGISLATOR As discussed above, the Dutch legislator has closely followed the (Dutch) text of the Directive in its implementation. It is also striking that the Dutch legislator has not made use of the opportunities offered by the current Directive for expanding its scope. Article 12(5) of the Directive for example indicates that the Member States can determine in their national legislation that a revocation period of 14 days will apply to package agreements concluded outside of physical sales locations. The phenomenon of Personal Travel Agent (PTA) is very popular in the Netherlands (industry association ANVR has currently about 1,000 PTAs). The PTA often visits the traveller at home and the travel agreement is often concluded there. The Dutch legislator could have determined that persons who book a trip through an PTA have 14 days to revoke the concluded travel agreement without substantiation. This would be impossible for PTAs. After all, a traveller would be able to revoke the agreement at no additional cost within 14 days, while the PTA has already concluded agreements with travel service providers. This has immediate adverse financial effects on the PTA and would mean that the PTA would only book certain travel services after this 14-day period, while the available travel services can change entirely in this 14-day period. Whether the PTA can still offer what the traveller has contacted it for would be doubtful. 23 Article 7:500(b)(ii) (and/or (ii)(1)) DCC.