Sustainable Tourism Law

THE UNWTO DRAFT CONVENTION ON THE PROTECTION OF TOURISTS 207 The commitment of the Agency to govern travellers’ rights stems from the consideration of the limitations of current binding rules, which should govern worldwide the rights and duties of tourists/consumers, tour operators, accommodation providers and other tourist service providers 18 . Therefore, taking into account the growing development of international tourism and the increasing consolidation of its social and economic functions, the UNWTO realized that it is important to establish new homogeneous rules on tourist protection, as well as to govern tourist services with the added objective of improving transparency and increasing legal certainty for travellers and traders. To find the right balance between tourist needs and providers’ interests, the Agency attempted to implement a series of new, homogeneous and globally coherent rules based on a general scenario that is highly characterized by a continuous increase of the tourist flow and by the progressive diversification of international destinations involved in tourism 19 . Indeed, the decision to work on a draft International Convention was sped up following some issues related to global climate change and natural disasters that occurred at the beginning of the newmillennium 20 , being also a consequence of the limitations of the International Conventions in dealing with transport, specifically by air 21 , and with other standard rules set up to regulate situations such as assisting travellers in trouble or repatriating tourists when the trip is interrupted due to force majeure 22 . On one hand, the UNWTO aims to ensure an adequate protection level for tourists, having a significant international degree of uniformity in order to also 18 See the Decision EC/DEC/11(LXXXIX), adopted by the World Tourism Organization Executive Council on the proposal of the Secretary General of the Organization on the occasion of its 89th session, held in Kish Island, Iran, on 26 October 2010 (CE/89/DEC). 19 On the occasion of the General Assembly held in Gyeongju, Korea, on October 8-14, 2011, the UNWTO welcomed the preliminary results of the Working Group and took note of “the preliminary work conducted in order to prepare some initiatives approved for the next biennium, notably on consumer and enterprise protection, leading to an international convention” [A/RES/593(XIX)]. 20 Among these, in particular, take note of the effects on the market of travel and holidays of the tsunami which occurred in the Indian Ocean on 26 December 2004, as well as the eruption of the Eyjafjöll volcano, in the southern part of Iceland, on 20 March 2010, which had serious consequences on the international air transport system and gave rise to the well-known ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union of 31 January 2013, in case C-12/11, Denise McDonagh vs . Ryanair Ltd. 21 In particular, R. Abeyratne, Regulation of Air Transport: The Slumbering Sentinels , Springer, Heidelberg, 2014, pp. 87 e 88, connects the UNWTO draft convention with the regulation of international air transport. 22 See C. Lima Marques – D. Wei, UNWorld Tourism Organization and the protection of foreign tourists in case of emergency situation/force majeure , Discussion Interim Report of the International Law Association for the Conference of Washington of 8 April 2014 on the international consumer protection, p. 14.