Tourism Law in Europe

3 and finally, the third part will focus on the third dimension- tourism services from service providers’ and tourists’ perspectives. Moreover, taking into account the pandemic situation, it will be discussed how this situation have influenced each of three dimensions. 2. The First Dimension of Tourism: Legal Regulation and Policy Formation of Tourism in Lithuania 2.1. Legal regulation of tourism The tourism usually is defined as the activities of persons travelling to a place outside his or her usual environment for less than a specified period of time and whose main purpose of travel is other than exercise of an activity remunerated from within the place visited. This tourism concept was presented in 1991 at the Ottawa International Conference 8 and further used such organisations as World Travel Organization (WTO) 9 and Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) 10 , by indicating that specified period of time is not more than one consecutive year. This definition was also established in the earliest legislation of Lithuania in tourism area 11 , however, with the later amendments of legislation this definition was deleted from the wording of law. The tourism is a social, cultural and economic phenomenon which entails the people travel outside their habitual residence for personal or business/professional purposes 12 . Therefore, the essence of the tourism is people travelling outside their habitual residence. In this perspective the tourism is seen as a way to ensure the freedom of movement and persons’ right to travel. 8 The Resolution of the International Conference on Travel and Tourism statistics, Ottawa, Canada, 24-28, June 1991. This resolution was approved by the United Nations Statistical Commission at its twenty-seventh session; available in https://repository.uneca.org/bitstream/handle/10855/3921/Bib- 29976.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y. 9 WTO. Global Code of Ethics for Tourism adopted by resolution of General Assembly A/RES/406(XIII) in October 1999. In this Resolution WTO does not provide the definition of tourism concept, however, just refer to the Resolution of the International Conference on Travels and Tourism. 10 See definition of tourism provided for the statistical purposes at the website of OECD; available in https://stats.oecd.org/glossary/detail.asp?ID=2725. 11 The Part 1 of the Article 2 of the first redaction of Law on Tourism (redaction of law No. VIII – 667, adopted in 19March 1998, the tourismdefined as purposeful activity by people, in connection with travel and temporary stay of up to one year, outside the location of one’s permanent place of residence, if this activity shall not involve teaching or compensated work at the location being visited. 12 WTO; available i n https://www.unwto.org/glossary-tourism-terms.