Collective Commentary about the New Package Travel Directive

ARTICLE 21 | SARAH PRAGER 463 arrangement or travel service provider (author’s emphasis added). For the purposes of Article 21, therefore, any of these business entities will be liable for booking errors. Clearly, then, the travel agent will be liable, as will, in appropriate cases, the tour operator or service provider. At a stroke, this renders otiose the questions posed in the caselaw referred to above; the consumer may bring proceedings against the travel agent, which might then pass on liability for such booking errors which might have been made in the course of processes outside its control. This is a development which is consistent with the overarching intention of the new Directive; it is designed to provide consumers with protection against the complex machinations of travel agents and tour operators who, under the old Directive, took advantage of the distinction between retailers and organisers to cast confusion around which of the many entities involved in the provision of a holiday might be liable in respect of any particular component of it. Under the new Directive, liability for booking errors rests squarely on the entity with which the consumer has to deal; for that will be the entity which has agreed to arrange the booking. So much for the identity of the entity liable for booking errors; Article 21 also provides guidance as to the nature of the obligations owed by that entity. As indicated, there are two potential areas of liability. First, liability for technical defects in the booking system. Where a trader is unable to book a particular holiday or some error is made in the booking process as a result of some technical problem, he will be liable to the consumer for any loss arising from this error. This would be the case where, for example, a special request is made for interconnecting rooms, but where as a result of a software glitch the request is not passed on to the hotel. Where the software problem is attributable to the trader’s system, and not, for example, that of the hotel, he will be liable for the resulting loss suffered by the consumer, which might range from the cost of changing rooms locally to significant costs where, for example, two entirely different rooms have to be purchased at an entirely different hotel. This course of action might be held to be justified on the part of the consumer where a family group goes on holiday, for example. The second area of liability arises only in respect of packages and linked travel arrangements. The trader will be liable for errors made during the booking process whether they are attributable to him or not. Accordingly, where a travel agent agrees to arrange a package holiday, but some error occurs during the entirety of the booking process, he will be liable for the resulting consequences. It remains to be seen how this will work in practice, but it is tentatively suggested