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

4 package obligations and, therefore, one can say that Article 12 PTD applies. However, the more the author thinks about it, the more doubts arise. III.4. Voucher as a type of renegotiation of the package travel contract There is a lesson to be learned from analysing the aforementioned three situations: there might be many cases in which we might struggle to apply Article 12 PTD, and, in those cases, the right of the traveller for a full refund is seriously under question. In those legally uncertain cases, we may need to consider other principles of contract law, such as the just renegotiation of the contract. Taking this into account, the vouchers that are being offered by tour operators to their clients may, in certain situations, be considered fair or just from an economic perspective of the tour operators, but also from the legal perspective of the traveller. In the author’s opinion, a fair mutual agreement between the tour operator and the traveller is better than a legal uncertainty, and an agreement relating to the provision of vouchers or a change in the date of the package is a just renegotiation. In most cases, the small and medium-sized tour operators are able to reach an agreement with their clients regarding vouchers or date changes, the problem arises with the big tour operators, in whom the loyalty of the customers is much lower, being theses the cases in which the majority of the travellers does not want to accept an amicable solution. Therefore, as in many other countries, the Czech Government has eventually decided to help the tour operators who could not arrive at an amicable solution with their customers. The governmental solution is called Lex Voucher. IV. Czech Lex Voucher Lex voucher has passed through the Parliament, on 16 April 2020, and has been in effect since 24 April 2020. The official name of Act No. 185/2020 is “Act on Certain Measures to Mitigate the Impact of the Coronavirus Epidemic Called SARS-CoV-2 on the Tourism Sector”. Lex voucher only applies to tour operators and packages, more specifically, those that would have started in the period between 20 February 2020 and 31 August 2020. Lex voucher also creates a special voucher system, including vouchers and bonus vouchers, but whereas vouchers for packages are optional, bonus vouchers are mandatory. The “normal” vouchers can be given for situations when the package travel contract has been terminated by the tour operator, or there has been a withdrawal by the customer based on the extraordinary circumstances in the destination. However, Lex vouchers do not recognise that situations which might fall outside of Art. 12 PTD, as previously suggested in the short analysis above, and for that reason, it is good that the system of vouchers is only an option. The tour