Collective Commentary about the New Package Travel Directive

1076 COLLECTIVE COMMENTARY ABOUT THE NEW PACKAGE TRAVEL DIRECTIVE guides”. The Act repealed the provisions implementing Directive 90/314 (mainly Chapters 2, 2a and 3). There is no doubt that the Act on hotel services and on the services of tour leaders and tourist guides is of significance from the perspective of the Act on package travel and linked travel arrangements. For instance, according to Directive 2015/2302 and the A.P.T. an accommodation facility should be defined according to the regulations of the country of residence, which in the case of facilities in Poland, means the Act on hotel services and on the services of tour leaders and tourist guides. This Act also retains a provision that goes beyond the title scope of its regulation, which refers to customer care. According to Article 30(1) of the Act on hotel services and on the services of tour leaders and tourist guides, “The travel organiser is obliged to provide the customer participating in the package travel with the care of a person representing the travel organiser. The scope of this care results from the contract of the travel organiser with the customer”. This provision generally refers to the care of the customer by the travel organiser, which may be provided not only by the tour leader or tourist guide (which is regulated by this act). It should also be noted that the specificity of the Polish implementation is probably the fact that the term “tour leader” 31 appears in the implementation act. Pursuant to Article 13(1) (3) of the A.P.T., in case of insolvency, a travel organiser or a trader facilitating a linked travel arrangement shall provide the competent marshal of the voivodeship with the contact details of the tour leader or a person representing the travel organiser who takes care of the travellers, provided such a tour leader or such a person has been appointed. While in this case the Directive does not contain specific provisions requiring the existence of a system providing effective protection, in the case of information which should be contained in a package travel contract or confirmation of its conclusion, there is already a clear difference from the Directive. Article 42(4)(1) of the A.P.T. requires this information to include “the name and contact details (address, telephone number, e-mail address) of the person representing the travel organiser or the tour leader responsible for the performance of the package travel”. However, according to Article 7(2)(d) of the Directive, the contract must specify: “the name, address, telephone number, e-mail address and, where applicable, the fax number of the organiser’s local representative, of a contact point or of another service which 31 According to the Article 3(1)(7b) of the Act on hotel services and on the services of tour leaders and tourist guides, a tour leader is “a person accompanying the participants of the package travel on behalf of the travel organiser, who cares for and oversees the way in which the services are provided to this participants and provides basic information about the country and place visited”.