Collective Commentary about the New Package Travel Directive

542 COLLECTIVE COMMENTARY ABOUT THE NEW PACKAGE TRAVEL DIRECTIVE • Stakeholders and authorities who contributed to the consultation raised the need to continue to work on effective and uniform application of the new rules of the Directive, including guidance to ensure unified implementation. • In relation to linked travel arrangements, stakeholders pointed to, inter alia, the lack of clarity regarding the meaning of “facilitation in a targeted manner” and the criteria for determining whether or not a second trader has concluded a contract with a traveller within 24 hours after the first contract. • The distinction between packages and linked travel arrangements seems to remain challenging for all travel operators, including hotels. • Finally, consumers need to be better aware of the extended protection brought by the Package Travel Directive 10 . In order to address the challenges related to “click-through” bookings, a large number of travel and tourism operators indicated that they have re-assessed existing partnerships with other traders or are in the process of doing so, in order to ensure that they exchange information with partners they can trust and who have the technological capacity. The new rules also appear to have led to changes in the design of traders’ websites (e.g. tabs presentation) and the provision of additional information to the one that is mandatory. One Expert Group member also reported about the creation of a separate company specifically for online bookings. Several participants in the Expert Group pointed out that some of their members ceased to offer the possibility of “click-through” booking of travel services offered by another trader or limited the promotion of third party services for fear of falling inadvertently into the linked travel arrangement category 11 . These findings partly confirm the conclusion envisaged by Mc Donald “ an LTA may force the market to alter itself rather than reflect the market and, indeed rather than make it safer and more efficient ” 12 . Moreover the lack of the airlines stakeholders in the consultation process may suggest that the Mc Donald´s proposal to prefer the legislative action concerning the airlines insolvency rather than to create the rather unclear model of LTA had been based on the profound knowledge of the travel industry shortages. 10 Part II of the Report. 11 See Staff Working Document SWD(2019)270, p. 7-8. 12 Mc Donald, M. Linked Travel Arrangements and Their Protection under the new Travel Package directive. In The new Package Travel Directive , Estoril: ESHTE, 2017, ISBN 978-989-99955-0-5, p. 99.