The Legal Impacts of COVID-19 in the Travel, Tourism and Hospitality Industry

3 fate of contracts concluded before the beginning of the epidemic and to understand how pending contracts are regulated, also in order to evaluate how costs are allocated in this dramatic situation, given that the downsizing of tourism activities in 2020 shall be taken for granted and expected to be between half and three-quarters of the 2019 turnover for Italy. 2. EU and Italian regulations on tourist packages According to Art. 12 of the EU Directive 2015/2302 on package travels and related services, the European States are required to provide for a regulation for the occurrence of unavoidable and extraordinary circumstances before departure, which must allow the termination of the contract by the decision of either the traveller or the organiser. According to Art. 12, paragraph 2, the tourist must prove that the unforeseeable and inevitable event occurred in the place of destination or in vicinity, with a substantial impact on the execution of the trip or the transport. Once the travel agreement has been terminated, the consumer has the right to repeat the payments made. On the other hand, if the organiser is unable to perform the contract, they can terminate it, giving prompt communication, before the start of the trip, pursuant to Art. 12, paragraph 3, b). Also, in this case, the operator must return the price paid, and if said impossibility is made clear before the departure, the trip is cancelled. In Italy, legislative decree No. 62 of 2018 implemented the directive by just to transposing into Art. 41, paragraph 4 and paragraph 5, b) of the Tourism Code, the provisions of the aforementioned Art. 12. It is irrelevant that the directive requires "impossibility" in the place of destination and not in the place of departure because the current COVID-19 emergency is a global one, and the distinction is currently meaningless. With Art. 28 of the Decree-Law No. 9 of 2020, Italy confirmed the impossibility of providing travel services anywhere in the country, as is also shown in Art. 88 of the subsequent Decree-Law No. 18 of 2020. Aside from the fact that the text improperly mentioned withdrawal instead of termination, wrongly citing