Collective Commentary about the New Package Travel Directive

ARTICLE 13 | ANTONIA PANIZA FULLANA 317 The most typical example, and the one described in the Directive itself, is that in which an airline offers the traveller the possibility of procuring other services that he may benefit from in the destination, such as accommodation, with a link to the booking website of another service provider or intermediary. It states in the text of the recital that “such linked travel arrangements constitute an alternative business model that often competes closely with packages” . It is for this reason that the traveller should obtain suitable protection in these types of services. The question can become complicated when the package is “facilitated” by websites such as TripAdvisor or others which, as well as being a website of travellers’ opinions, also provide the possibility of booking flights or accommodation (it sometimes redirects to other companies such as booking. com, in the case of hotels, and in other cases the booking is made onTripAdvisor). It must be understood that if we consider the “trader who facilitates” – in the terminology of the Directive – will have to meet the obligations that article 19 of the Directive imposes on him, including protection against insolvency. In these cases, they would still be considered as individual services, to put it one way, but in concluding the different contracts of each one, a “facilitating” trader has intervened or acted as intermediary. By introducing the new figure of linked travel arrangements, the Directive in turn introduced a new subject: the trader who facilitates. This new figure necessarily leads one to remember what, even in the publication of the new regulations, the doctrine called “dynamic packages”: traders who either in person or online “assist travellers”; on the occasion of a single visit or contact with their point of sale; in concluding separate contracts with individual service providers, as for online traders: with connected online booking processes. From the analysis of the proposed Directive it can be extracted that, as well as what has been said with regard to what were “assisted travel arrangements”, it was the retailer providing them: “assisted travel arrangements”: the combination of at least two types of travel services for the same trip or holiday that does not constitute a package and which leads to separate contracts being concluded with each of the travel service providers, if a retailer facilitates the combination…”. And article 15, on the efficacy and scope of the protection against insolvency, established that the “organisers” and “retailers” that facilitate the procurement of linked travel arrangements “receive guarantee of effective and immediate refund of all payments made by travellers and, insofar as carriage of passengers is included, for