Collective Commentary about the New Package Travel Directive

INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION ON TRAVEL CONTRACTS (CCV) 647 “ 1. The travel organizer may, without indemnity, cancel the contract, in whole or in part, if before the contract or during its performance, circumstances of an exceptional character manifest themselves of which he could not have known at the time of conclusion of the contract, and which, had they been known to him at that time, would have given him valid reason not to conclude the contract. 2. The travel organizer may also, without indemnity, cancel the contract if the minimum number of travellers stipulated in the travel document has not been reached, provided the traveller has been informed thereof at least fifteen days before the date on which the journey or sojourn was due to begin. 3. In event of cancellation of the contract before its performance, the travel organizer shall refund in full any payments received from the traveller. In the event of cancellation of the contract during its performance, the travel organizer shall take all necessary measures in the interest of the traveller; furthermore, the parties shall compensate each other in an equitable manner ”. Article 10 could be valuable for the current situation of limitations on travel and shutdowns caused by COVID-19 worldwide. Moreover, the possibility, present in Art. 10.2, to cancel the contract if a minimum number of tourists are not able to seize it could also be useful to face the outbreak consequences. The main pillars of the CCV convention are the duty to inform the travelers, as well as provide them with documents (Arts. 5, 6 and 7), which may be helpful in emergent situations 31 . As we saw, the CCV Convention did not receive the expected global approval. Likewise, the legal doctrine tries to exam the internal reasons for such lack of success; Jürgen Basedow argues that the CCV Convention leaves “ open loopholes to the operator to contract out of his personal liability by splitting up the inclusive price or by putting an agency clause into the contract ” 32 . Indeed, the CCV, by trying to regulate two complex services related to the consumer at once (intermediary travel contract and package travel contract) and without a sensible regard for his 31 For the importance of information to consumers, vid . SCARTEZZINI GUIMARÃES, Paulo Jorge . Dos contratos de hospedagem, de transporte de passageiros e de turismo. São Paulo: Saraiva, 2007, p. 258. One of the key rights under Directive (EU) 2015/2302 is that: “Travellers are given an emergency telephone number or details of a contact point where they can get in touch with the organiser or the travel agent” (Annex 1, Part B). 32 See Basedow, Jürgen. The Law of Open Society , The Hague Academy of Private International Law, Leiden: Brill, 2015, p. 108: