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

14 workers, consumers, families and vulnerable groups. For example, in contracts for the sale of goods and the provision of services, whether or not they are successive, whose execution is impossible as a result of the declaration of the State of Alarm, consumers and users may exercise the right to terminate the contract during 14 days; and in ongoing contracts, the collection of new fees will be paralysed until the service can return to normal. However, here we find it of special interest regarding package travel, which is addressed in section 4) of Article 36, which is entitled “Right of termination of certain contracts without penalty by consumers and users” and provides the following: “In the event that they are combined travel contracts, which have been cancelled due to COVID19, the organiser or, where appropriate, the retailer, may give the consumer or user a voucher to be used within one year from the termination of the validity of the state of alarm and its extensions, for an amount equal to the refund that would have been due. After the period of validity of the voucher, if unused, the consumer may request a full refund of any payment made. In any case, the eventual offer of a temporary substitute bond must have sufficient financial support to guarantee its execution ”. Notwithstanding the foregoing, the organiser or the retailer must proceed to make a refund to consumers and users if they request the termination of the contract, following the provisions of section 2 of Article 160 of the consolidated text of the General Law for the Protection of Consumers and Users and other complementary laws, provided that the service providers included in the package travel contract had fully reimbursed the amount corresponding to their services. If only some of the service providers of the combined trip refunded the organiser or the retailer, or the amount returned by each of them was partial, the consumer or user would be entitled to the partial refund corresponding to the returns made, being discounted from the amount of the bonus given by the termination of the contract. The organiser or retailer will proceed to make the already mentioned refunds within a period not exceeding 60 days from the date of the termination of the contract or from that in which the service providers had proceeded with their repayment. However, these provisions of article 36 do not coincide exactly with the provisions of paragraphs 2 and 3 of Article 12 of Directive (EU) 2015/2302, of 25 November, on package travel and linked travel arrangements, on the right of withdrawal before the start of the trip. Neither with Article 160 of the Consolidated Text of the General Law for the Protection of Consumers and Users approved by Royal Legislative Decree 1/2007, of 16 November, modified