Collective Commentary about the New Package Travel Directive

The implementation of Directive 2015/2302 in Latvia Alona Rogale-Homika 1 Marina Gunare 2 1. Introduction; 2. The course of the legislative process related to the implementation of Directive 2015/2302 in Latvia; 3. Distinctive features of the implementation of Directive 2015/2302 in Latvia; 3.1. Amount of security, deposit and payment procedure; 3.2. The involvement of additional organisations; 4. Assessment of the correctness of implementation; 5. Conclusion; Bibliography. 1. INTRODUCTION The tourism industry is a fast-developing secondary sector of the economy. Package travels, package holidays and package tours make up a significant proportion of the travel market. There are different combinations of travel services that are provided nowadays to the customers, but have no common characteristics in the overall statistics, as well as have no regulation in terms of Law on Consumer Rights Protection. These lead such services to operate in the so-called “grey zone”, which is uncontrollable and has often led to negative consequences. The number of international tourists in the first half of 2019 has grown up to 4%, almost 30 million tourists more than in the same period of the previous year (UNWTO, 2019). The rapid growth of international tourism also implies a revision of laws on tourism and the introduction of appropriate amendments: communication between tourists and tourism service providers, including tourist rights and obligations, as well as the rights and obligations of all other parties involved. That is why the new Directive 2015/2302 on package travel 1 Master of Arts in Tourism Management. Student of the Doctorate programme “Regional Economics and Economic policy”. Baltic International Academy. 2 Prof., Dr. sc. pol. Head of Tourism Department. Baltic International Academy.