Collective Commentary about the New Package Travel Directive

FINLAND | MIKKO LAAKSO 787 basis thereof. This will facilitate the timely provision of information to consumers on their rights under the NPTD. In addition, the terms will facilitate the resolution of possible differences of interpretation, as both the national supervisory authority and the tourism industry will be able to participate in the negotiations. This type of setting and an opportunity to openly negotiate also provide an opportunity to discuss about the minor details the NPTD or national legislation would not explicitly determine. In this case, consensus on the final draft was reached in June 2018, just before the new legislation came into force. 3. DISTINCTIVE FEATURES OF THE IMPLEMENTATION a. Transposition The NPTD articles were implemented fully into the national legislation and no reservations nor more stringent provisions were introduced as the legislators regarded the level of consumer protection provided by the NPTD to be enough for the purpose of the directive. Transposition was completed in time, ie. national provisions were published before 1.1.2018 and applied from 1.7.2018 onwards. During the spring of 2018, mere months before the Acts were applied into force, the FCCA received the first inquiries for the interpretation regarding the scope of the provisions. I shall go through two slightly different cases to highlight the first problems encountered by the actors of the travel service industry. In my opinion it is characteristic that both inquiries were about whether the provisions of the Directive apply to the questioner’s own conduct rather than how they should act accordingly. b. Case: Dynamic cross selling of travel products i. The basics and legal basis of dynamic cross selling Nowadays online cloud system tools enable the dynamic cross selling of travel products and services offered by different traders, whereby the consumer acquires combinations of travel services subject to the provisions of the Act on combinations of travel services. In this case, traders may accordingly be subject to the provisions of the Act on providers of combinations of travel services. The purpose of dynamic cross selling is to facilitate business-to-business collaboration by enabling services to be sold across multiple channels, high street and online at the same time. As this may result to be a web shop that looks like a normal e-commerce service from the consumer’s point of view, it is important to clarify