Collective Commentary about the New Package Travel Directive

218 COLLECTIVE COMMENTARY ABOUT THE NEW PACKAGE TRAVEL DIRECTIVE information on the suitability of the trip or holiday taking into account the traveller’s needs. Some new information items are not related to the characteristics of the travel services. This is the case of the e-mail address of the organiser and retailer, the total price of the package inclusive of taxes and, where applicable, all additional fees, charges and other costs (or, where appropriate, an indication of the type of the additional costs), the financial guarantees to be paid or provided by the traveller or the existence of the withdrawal right and the consequences of exercising it. When an area of law initially subject to a minimum harmonisation principle becomes one of maximum harmonisation, it tends to have the effect of increasing the volume of information that is to be provided 8 . In this case, very few issues were omitted in the new regulation, and one of these is the information on the place to be occupied by the traveller on the means of transport, since these details sometimes are unknown in advance 9 . Despite the increasing volume of information with Art. 5(1) of the new Package Travel Directive, the organiser and retailer were not obliged to provide information in a language the traveller was able to understand because it was considered that such a requirement would be excessively costly to the industry 10 . The pre-contractual information must be provided before the traveller is bound by any package travel contract or any corresponding offer, which means that the traveller will have time to evaluate the information and, where appropriate, to make a decisionon whether or not to purchase the travel services. Therefore, providing the required information at the time of the acceptance would be too late. The same rule will be applicable to last minute bookings as no exception was made in Art. 5(1) of the Package Travel Directive 11 . The timing for when information must be provided was regulated differently in the E-Commerce Directive because general information arising from Art. 5 must be “directly and permanently accessible” and contract-related information provided in Art. 10(1) must be given “prior to the order being placed” when the 8 Under minimum harmonisationMember States maintained or introduced additional information obligations, yet they are not entirely free to add unnecessary information obligations. See C-386/00 Axa Royale v Georges Ochoa Stratégie Finance SPRL, ECLI:EU:C:2002:136, paras. 23-24. 9 Cf. Art. 4(1)(b)(i) of the old Package Travel Directive. 10 Cf. Arts. 4(3) and 5(1) of the Timeshare Directive 2008/122/EC ( OJ 2009 L 33/10). 11 The crucial thing is that the consumer should receive the information at a time and in a form that allows him to make appropriate use of it.