Collective Commentary about the New Package Travel Directive

66 COLLECTIVE COMMENTARY ABOUT THE NEW PACKAGE TRAVEL DIRECTIVE – purchased from separate traders through linked online booking processes where the traveller’s name, payment details and e-mail address are transmitted from the trader with whom the first contract is concluded to another trader or traders and a contract with the latter trader or traders is concluded at the latest 24 hours after the confirmation of the booking of the first travel service. In short, as CRISTINA BERENGUER (2016, p. 38) notes, now “ traditional packages organized by the agency are protected” , stating that it will be indifferent to consider them ‘package’ if such a combination is made by the consumer’s request and according to their wishes, or prior to any contact with him (art. 3.2.a), as well as “ customized or tailored packages marketed in a single sale point or with several entrepreneurs”, among which there is a commercial connection, regardless of whether separate contracts with different providers of travel services that make up the package are concluded (art. 3.3): “Package travel contract’ means a contract on the package as a whole or, if the package is provided under separate contracts, all contracts covering travel services included in the package”. Since travel services can be combined in many different ways, it should be regarded as ‘package’ all combinations of travel services which exhibit the characteristics that travellers normally associate with such kind of travel, particularly when different travel services are combined into a single travel product, whose proper execution is the responsibility of the organizer. In conformity with the jurisprudence of the ECJ, there should be no difference between the combination of travel services prior to any contact with the traveller, or at the request of the traveller or according to his selection. The same principles should be applied regardless of whether the booking is made through an entrepreneur who serves their clients in person or online (Recital 8). We find judicial decisions on the concept of package in Community case law through requests of preliminary rulings. Thus, ECJS February 11, 1999 Case C-237/97 ‘AFS Finland’, clarifies that Directive 90/314 “ does not apply to travels consisting of student exchanges of approximately 6 months or a year time, aimed at students attendance to a high school in a host country, in order to familiarize with its people and their culture and, by this time, students stay free of charge in a host family, as if they were part of it”. However, it is considered a package when the travel is offered as a gift by a media outlet, as the art. 7 of the Directive applies “to trips offered as a gift by a media outlet exclusively in favour of its subscribers as part of an