Sustainable Tourism Law

FROM TOURISM TO SUSTAINABLE TOURISM 53 IV. THE TRIANGULAR STRUCTURE OF TOURISM RELATIONSHIP Triangular structure of touristic relationship and the impact of the web-tourism A legal analysis of the tourism phenomenon presupposes – traditionally – the study of the subjects. I would say that one of the peculiarities of modern legal relations in tourism was – and still is – its triangular structure: tourist, tour operator and travel agent. For decades, Tourism was organized by individual initiative and spirit of adventure, or through the intervention and the competency of a Travel Agent. The eighteenth-century tourists travelled by themselves, concluding, from time to time, contracts with the carrier, the hotelier, the guide or the escort. In modern mass tourism, the structure is triangular: the tour operator organizes the trip, the travel agent advertises it and sells it, and the consumer traveller takes advantage of it. Tourism relationships are therefore based mainly on a particular trilateral geometric representation. The Digital Revolution has changed the general picture. More and more travellers organize their trips on the Internet. Increasingly more tourists put together their vacations using the Internet. But the traditional bilateral relations between the traveller and the hotel, between the traveller and the carrier, have survived and developed in the age of the Internet between the traveller and the service provider. These relationships continue to be governed by the contractual discipline, typical or typified, which is to be understood and studied in its “touristic” dimension. Travel Agent Travel agencies are therefore at the centre of the triangular structure of the travel contract discipline, which finds its historical sources in the CCV. The International Convention on Travel Contracts defines the Travel Agent as a Travel Intermediary, stating that ““ Travel Intermediary” shall be any person who habitually or regularly undertakes to perform the contract defined in paragraph 3, whether such activity is his main business or not and whether he exercises such activity on a professional basis or not ”. It may be interesting to remember that the Italian travel agencies have been gathered in a category association, the ASSOVIAGGI. ASSOVIAGGI (Associazione Italiana Agenzie di Viaggio e Turismo – Association of Travel and Tourism Agencies) is a category association that has around 800 companies operating in the travel and tourism business. ASSOVIAGGI belongs to