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

In Spain, the Texto refundido de la Ley General para la Defensa de los Consumidores y Usuarios regulates the joint and several liability of the organisers and retailers that concur jointly in the package travel contract, when there is a breach in its execution, reserving the right of repetition against whoever is responsible for the breach or defective performance of the contract 10 . This implies that most of the claims are directed to travel agencies, whether online or traditional, which are currently bearing the burden of claims, regardless of the right of repetition that they have against the breach or defective fulfillment of the contract, that is, mostly hotels and airlines. What is the complaint of travel agencies in the face of the Covid-19 crisis? Its main complaint is the lack of liquidity to comply with the reimbursement provided for in Directive (EU) 2015/2302 and transpositions to legal systems. Take for example a package travel that a travel agency organized before the pandemic, which included a hotel and flight. Once the health crisis breaks out, the airline communicates that the flights are canceled and, however, the travel agency has already transferred the payment of the ticket to the airline, so the travel agency does not have that money. The travel agency informs that client that it will give him a voucher but communicates that it will not return the money. However, the Package Travel Directive requires the traveller to be reimbursed for the package travel, which means facing the bankruptcy of many travel agencies that do not have the necessary liquidity to proceed with these reimbursements. In this situation, the Business Federation of Territorial Associations of Spanish Travel Agencies (Federación Empresarial de Asociaciones Territoriales de Agencias de Viajes Españolas, FETAVE) asked the Government to relax the regulations regarding reimbursements due to the thousands of cancellations that are taking place, to avoid the bankruptcy of the sector tourist in Spain. They requested the possibility of also offering bonuses for the lack of liquidity to reimburse package travel inorder to protect employment in the tourism sector. It was necessary to avoid the collective cancellation of trips and turn them into postponements for a time of the decision to travel with the possibility of changing the destination and, ultimately, later when the liquidity situation 10 Vid , S. Feliu Álvarez de Sotomayor, Viajes combinados y servicios de viajes vinculados (Directiva (UE) 2015/2302. Cuestiones de ley aplicable, cit ., 2018, pp. 92.