Collective Commentary about the New Package Travel Directive

966 COLLECTIVE COMMENTARY ABOUT THE NEW PACKAGE TRAVEL DIRECTIVE 3.2. The involvement of additional organisations As before, industry monitoring is being carried out by the Consumer Rights Protection Centre; moreover, the Centre now controls the database for tourism service providers, who are operating within Latvia’s territory. The database holds information about all tourism service providers, including tour operators, travel agencies and providers of related travel services. The Centre, besides being responsible for issuing licenses to tourism service providers in the Republic of Latvia, is also responsible for stopping those businesses that do not comply with the requirements or that operate without a license. The Centre is somehow a central contact point, ensuring the active exchange of information with the EU Member States on providers of complex and related travel services. If the Centre determines that the amount of security to the tour operator or that related tourism service provided is not enough to fulfil the requirements referred to Section 16, paragraphs 2 or 3 of the Latvian Tourism Law, the Centre must inform the relevant tour operator or related travel service provider within ten working days. The Centre may ask the tour operator or related travel service provider to increase the amount of the security (Latvian Tourism Law, 2018). For the current moment, 4 licences are suspended and 8 licences are cancelled until further notice (Consumer Rights Protection Centre, 2020). 4. ASSESSMENT OF THE CORRECTNESS OF IMPLEMENTATION There were certain difficulties in implementing the system of reports for the tourism service providers. The report template was edited, and the related informational campaigns were held during the transitional period. There was an initial lack of cooperation between the industry and the representatives of the legal parties, given that without knowing the industry’s specifics, it was not possible to design and implement the correct model. The template of the quarterly report has already been edited, even though the data obtained from these reports is not accurate, since not every firm is capable of providing accurate information regarding the complex and related tourism services, because each tourism service provider is using a different internal reporting system, which usually does not meet the requirements set by the Consumer Rights Protection Centre.