Collective Commentary about the New Package Travel Directive

CROATIA | TATJANA JOSIPOVIĆ 713 rights and obligations of the parties to the contract, as well as those governing public enforcement of the protection of the rights of travellers. Laying down private law and public law provisions on package travel contracts in the same Act resulted in the elimination of the fragmentation which existed before because private law and public law aspects of a package travel contract were governed by two separate acts (the Obligations Act and the former TSA). This approach was an essential prerequisite for an adequate and effective application of the provisions by which the new PTD was implemented in Croatian law. On the other hand, the provisions of the package travel contract were thus also connected with other provisions of tourism law in the national legal order. The package travel contract rules can no longer be considered as a part of general contract law which used to be the case when this type of contract was governed by the Obligations Act. Following the implementation in the TSA, the provisions of a package travel contract became a part of a consistent system of tourism law together with all other provisions providing for various rules involving the provision of services, such as the right of establishment, the right to provide other particular services of tourist industry (health tourism, nautical tourism, congress tourism and the like), the regulation of professions in the area of tourism, the protection of travellers’ rights, administrative supervision and inspection involving the provision of tourism services. Finally, this has all resulted in a change of the hierarchical relations between individual laws governing package travel contracts and has become the source of tourism law in Croatia. The implementation of the new PTD in the TSA resulted in its becoming the main legal source for package travel contracts. A subsidiary application of the Obligations Act comes into play regarding the obligations between travellers and organisers only if the TSA does not provide differently 51 . The same is the case with the Consumer Protection Act: it applies to the rights of travellers-consumers only if in the TSA, there is no separate provision on the travellers’ rights 52 . Package travel contracts are dealt with in the third part of the Tourism Services Act entitled “Package travel contracts and contracts on linked travel 51 Art. 10 TSA. 52 For example: the TSA expressly provides for ‘off-premises contracts’ (Art. 7, point 18) and the traveller’s right of withdrawal when the package travel contract is made as an ‘off-premises contract’ (Art. 37, para. 9 TSA). In that segment, the provisions of the Consumer Protection Act on off-premises contract, harmonised with Directive 2011/83/EU on consumer rights ( OJ L 304, 22.11.2011, pp 64–88), have to be applied.