Collective Commentary about the New Package Travel Directive

788 COLLECTIVE COMMENTARY ABOUT THE NEW PACKAGE TRAVEL DIRECTIVE the issues that traders need to pay attention to in order to fulfill their obligations under the Act on combinations of travel services and Act on providers of combinations of travel services. In order to assess the conditions for the creation of a package, it is therefore essential that the package consists of at least two different types of travel services within the meaning of Article 2 of the Act which are acquired for the same holiday or journey. The concept of the same holiday or journey is difficult, if not impossible, to be objectively defined, so that the boundary for this definition will remain case specific. In the clearest cases, the consumer buys accommodation, transportation and activities near the one-week window. On the other hand, a consumer may obtain a combination of travel services otherwise considered as a package on a single booking site, with the time of making use of the single travel services being weeks or months apart or the places of provision of the services being located at considerable distance from each other. The mere fact that a consumer is booking accommodation and activity in different locations does not mean that it cannot be a travel service for the same trip if, for example, the booking site in question does not provide any transport services which the consumer has to arrange from elsewhere. In addition to traditional contracts with a single service provider and covering several different travel services, a travel package may also be formed when contracts are concluded with different service providers. The concept of a single point of sale has been explained in the NPTD as follows: ‘point of sale’ shall mean any retail premises, whether movable or immovable, or a retail website or similar online sales facility, including where retail websites or online facilities are presented to travellers as a single facility, including a telephone service. In the meeting note of the NPTD transposition workshop (13 June 2016), Commission has outlined that if a single point of sale is perceived to be one by an average consumer, then it is a single point of sale within the meaning of the Directive. In addition, where separate contracts for travel services within the meaning of Article 3 (2) (b) of the Directive are concluded through a single point of sale, the Commission has set as an example of a dynamic package. An e-commerce site can thus be considered as a single point of sale where the consumer can select and purchase travel services without having to go to another site at the time of the transaction or before making a payment. The key to assessing the existence of a single point of sale within the meaning of the NPTD and national transposition is therefore the consumer’s legitimate image, not the true nature of the technical implementation chosen by the trader.