Collective Commentary about the New Package Travel Directive

LITHUANIA | DANGUOLĖ BUBLIENĖ AND IEVA NAVICKAITĖ-SAKALAUSKIENĖ 987 contract. Individuals travelling for business purposes, including members of the liberal professions or self-employed persons or other natural persons who have not concluded contracts of the type referred to in Article 1 (2), (3) of this Law, shall be deemed to be tourists if they conclude a package travel contract and/or purchase linked tourist service arrangements”. Therefore, notwithstanding the broadening of the definition’s content, the term ‘tourist’ was maintained. Some authors 19 criticise this approach arguing that the term ‘tourist’ refers to the consumer as such; therefore, in that context, this term might create the wrong impression about the content of this definition. These authors propose to change terminology and to use the ‘traveller’ concept as it is indicated in the Travel Directive. As it was noticed in this article, the term ‘tourist’, transposed into national legislation, is described in the same way as in the directive. Therefore, there is no ground to argue that the term ‘tourist’, by its content, equates to the term ‘consumer’. Moreover, in Lithuanian language, the term ‘tourist’ often is used as the synonymous of the term ‘traveller’ and vice versa 20 . The argument might make sense if it could be argued that the terminology might be misleading since the previous regulation has left a very deep trace in the mind of society. By the way, it should be noted that the term ‘tourist’ used in the previous version of the Law on Tourism did not refer to the definition of the consumer 21 , this reference to the consumer was made only by the preceding regulation of the Civil Code. Therefore, it is arguable whether that confusion exists in Lithuania. However, according to the view of the authors of this article, the dilemma ‘consumer-traveller’ has a greater influence over the transposition process of the Travel Directive than it could appear at first glance. As might be concluded from the preamble of the Directive, the protective regime designed to the consumers according to the other EU law (except for two directives which were amended by the article 27 of the Travel Directive) is not applied to the persons who are not consumers. Therefore, seeking proper transposition of the provisions of the 19 Salvija Mulevičienė; Edmundas Rusinas. The problems of Transposition of Travel Directive into national law and its implementation. Jurisprudence, 2019, 26 (1), p. 212. 20 Available at http://sinonimas.lt/sinonimai/t/turistas/; http://sinonimas.lt/sinonimai/k/keliautojas/. 21 As it was mentioned in this article, the term ‘tourist’ in the Law on Tourism and in the Civil Code was described using different approaches: Article 6.747 (5) in essence reflected the definition of the consumer indicated in the old Travel Directive, by the way, the Law on Tourism defined the tourist as a natural person who for familiarisation, professional, business, ethnic, cultural, recreational, religious or special reasons travels within a country or other countries, and remains for at least one night but not longer than one year outside the limits of his or her permanent place of residence, provided that these activities are not training or paid work in the area visited.