Collective Commentary about the New Package Travel Directive

ARTICLE 3 | MARC MC DONALD 159 departure or place, time of return. There is typically a wider range of accommodation offered in an LTA than a package. Packages and LTA’s may appeal to different age and socio-economic groups. Elderly couples may prefer holidays where all is pre-determined and arranged for them, whereas younger people may prefer to do things themselves. These are significant differences which one would have liked the Commission to address in a market analysis to quieten fears that like was not being compared with like. Another market issue is whether the types of LTA under discussion here might not even be a product in the sense of a commercial service which competes with packages as products. When a flight is sold there is no obligation or certainty the consumer will book accommodation through a website linked to the airline’s website. If a product is understood as something whose features are known in advance by the supplier or suppliers, that is not the case here. At the moment the flight is booked the package and the LTA are clearly different ‘products’. The LTA doesn’t even exist. Booking the hotel later through a link on the airline’s website is supposed to alter the nature of the flight product into an LTA product. When the hotel is later booked, there are now two separate contracts with two separate payees, and two separate payments and payment methods. Despite these uncertainties and differences perhaps it is the case that a non- competing product can be transformed into a competing one. Perhaps this is only a pedantic point, but it would have helped if a market analysis showed this to be so. This omission is all the more surprising given that the expertise to undertake market analysis lies withinCommission’s ownDirectorate- -General on Competition. 3. AIRLINES OUTSIDE THE SECURITY OBLIGATION Whether airlines should be subject to an insolvency obligation is relevant to the present discussion because airlines expose consumers to the same core risk arising from insolvency as organisers and LTA-facilitators do – being stranded abroad/ away from home. Three different airline situations can be distinguished to help the discussion – airlines selling seats only – airlines selling seats and other services like accommodation in a package, and – airlines selling seats and linking in with a website which sells other tourism services, such as accommodation or car hire or event tickets. Only the first of these is discussed now. The latter two are covered in the discussion on organisers and facilitators.