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

fee, in the event of unavoidable and extraordinary circumstances. The traveller shall be entitled to a full refund of any payments made for the package, but shall not be entitled to additional compensation, which is verbatim of the Package Travel Directive article. Noteworthy is the fact that the legal framework provides that where a package travel contract would be terminated due to ‘ unavoidable and extraordinary circumstances ’, the traveller shall be entitled to ‘ a full refund of any payments made ’. This means that, notwithstanding any payments made by the organiser to third parties, such as hotels and airlines, the organiser would have to refund the traveller in full. Moreover, it is important to also highlight that the Directive does not provide for an alternative to refunds, such as vouchers. This may be considered, in the author’s opinion, as a lack of flexibility, as will be explained in detail. It is likewise relevant to note that, whereas in the above-mentioned provision, the traveller is entitled to a full refund of any payments made, there is no mention of a termination fee that may be payable to the organiser. In fact, in a different circumstance, the Directive, as well as Maltese law, provides that should the traveller terminate the package travel contract, the traveller may be required to pay an appropriate and justifiable termination fee to the organiser. Therefore, such an ‘ appropriate and justifiable termination fee ’ is not provided for in the COVID-19 scenario given the ‘ unavoidable and extraordinary circumstances’. This means that, after all the organiser’s work, the organiser would be left with an out of pocket expense for the time spent in organising the entire package, not to mention communicating with both the traveller and the third party providers, to ensure an enjoyable holiday. Furthermore, in the author’s opinion, besides the issue of the refund, as well as that no termination fee may be requested by the organiser, the third issue that brings about further discussion is that the Package Travel Directive, in Article 12.4 (and Maltese law) provides that the organiser shall provide the said refund to the traveller, without undue delay and in any event, no later than 14 days after the package travel contract is terminated. Such timeframe may be deemed to be too short a time, especially in circumstances like the current one, wherein it is not just one travel package contract that is being cancelled, and thus, the organiser would have to refund a greater number of travel package contracts within that short timeframe. 2. The situation in the EU brought about by COVID-19 As mentioned previously, due to the situation brought forward by COVID-19, both the Package Travel Directive and Maltese Law were resorted to, in order to resolve the situation regarding travellers cancelling their travel package contracts under the ‘ unavoidable and extraordinary circumstances ’ clause. As a result, organisers both in Malta and in the EU were bound by the Package Travel Directive and thus had to refund the travellers within the 14-day time frame, as is required by law.