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

Consumer law scholars 48 call attention to the challenges presented to law by international mass tourism. The traditional package travel contract is currently facing the emergence of new forms of engagement, particularly those offered through online tourism service providers, such as forfeit travel, packages tour or new forms of accommodation and transport, as dynamic packages, which require stake out a review of the premise of legislative rules governing it 49 . These challenges for the law do not derive only from technological progress (electronic booking, maps and information about tourism services in foreign places, reservation at a distance) nor from the complexities and diverse range of the current tourism contracts (package tours, time-sharing, adventure tourism, youth educational tourism, tourism for conferences, professional, language and religious training), but are also connected with changes to the tourist’s profile. Next to mass tourism to all social classes, a new elite tourism industry is blooming, and there are changes in the tourism industry (global network alliances of the transport industry, new commercial agreements to ‘codesharing’ and global chains of travel packages/tours expertise, specialisation of national travel agencies, and so on). The legal doctrine calls for the need for a “renewal of international instruments on tourism” 50 , being, one of the changes in mass tourism, the decrease in the use of travel agencies and organisers. Brazilian research data shows that many tourists no longer use travel agencies or travel organisers 51 , but rather hire the services directly in the country of destination, having 65.4% of the foreign tourists that visited Brazil from 2011 to 2014 not used travel agencies at their home State 52 . These challenges on mass tourism can no longer be answered only with changes in national law and have been responded by supranational laws in the context of 48 TONNER, Klaus. Electronic Commerce and Travel Law, In WILHELMSSON, Thomas et al. (Ed.). Consumer Law in the Information Society , Kluwer, 2001, p. 205. 49 ALVAREZ DE SOTOMAYOR, Silvia Feliu. El tratamiento legal del contrato de viaje combinado en el Derecho Internacional Privado, in 4 Cuadernos Derecho Transnacional (2012), p. 123. 50 See TUDELA. J. “Madurez y insuficiencia del derecho del turismo español: su presente y sus incertidumbres”, in Derecho del Turismo, FACAL, J. (Org.), Derecho del Turismo , Montevideo, FCU 2006, p. 251. 51 ATHENIENSE, Luciana R. A responsabilidade jurídica das agências de viagens . Belo Horizonte: Del Rey, (2002), pp. 17 & ff. 52 Available a t http://www.turismo.gov.br/export/sites/default/turismo/o_ministerio/publicacoes/downlo ads_publicacoes/Documento_Referencial_Turismo_no_Brasil_2011-2014.pdf ( accessed on 28 July 2020).