Collective Commentary about the New Package Travel Directive

LATVIA | ALONA ROGALE-HOMIKA AND MARINA GUNARE 963 a statutory minimummoney deposit guarantee from clients. However, according to Lursoft, a Latvian IT company that provides access to “general national legal information database” (Lursoft), there were, for the same period, 437 registered tourism companies which provided complex tourism services. This means that only 13,3 % of the tourism service providers had the necessary financial security. Nevertheless, the situation in Latvia regarding the insolvency of package tour operators was relatively positive, since only a few cases where the package tour operator was unable to provide customer-paid travel services have been found since 1990, when the regulation on paid in money security guarantee came into force. One of the most recent cases is the commencement of insolvency proceedings of “Relaks Tūre” LLC, in which the compensation claimed by customers amounted to be more than 55,000 euros, but paid in money security guarantee was 28,500 euros (Consumer Rights Protection Centre, 2015). Taking into account the disproportionate amount of the “Relaks Tūre” LLC’s insurance policy with the amount of actual losses incurred by the parties involved, it is clear that not all customers will not be able to get the money paid for the tourist service booked. This situation proved the ineffectiveness of the old model. 3. DISTINCTIVE FEATURES OF THE IMPLEMENTATION OF DIRECTIVE 2015/2302 IN LATVIA The new model is the combination of insurance (to be provided by the insurance company) or bank guarantee (whichever is beneficial for individual tourism companies), as well as security for the repatriation of travellers with special permission (license). If the tourism service provider does not fully or partially provide the tourism services due to liquidity problems, a combined security guarantee model ensures the refund of the money the customer paid, as well as the travellers’ repatriation and the prevention of unexpected insolvency risks of the tourism service providers. The annual state fee for a special permit (license) for one tourist service provider, who needs security in case of tourist repatriation, is 40 €. The Cabinet of Ministers determines the procedure of security deposit; therefore, the Ministry of Economics has developed an appropriate Cabinet of Ministers Regulations on 26 June 2018, which defines the model’s operation and monitoring and the amount of security deposits (Cabinet of Ministers, 2018).