Sustainable Tourism Law

54 SUSTAINABLE TOURISM LAW Confesercenti and represents and protects its associates in European and national institutions in terms of tariff policies, travel safety, facilitating credit and integration of transport policies. Tour Operator The Tour Operator organizes travels. The 1990 Directive refers to the ‘organizer’ and defines him as follows : “‘organizer’ means the person who, other than occasionally, organizes packages and sells or offers them for sale, whether directly or through a retailer ”. The CCV refers to a “Travel Organizer”, stating that a Travel Organizer “ means any person who habitually or regularly undertakes to perform the contract defined in paragraph 2, whether or not such activity is his main business and whether or not he exercises such activity on a professional basis ”. It may be interesting to note here as well that the Italian Tour Operators are now gathered in a strong association of categories, the ASTOI (‘Associazione Tour Operator Italiani – Italian Tour Operator Association), founded in 2000, following the merger of ASSOTOUR and ATOI, the two preexisting tour operators’ associations. ASTOI adheres to IFTO, International Federation of Tour Operators. Web operator In recent years, a growing number of tourists have relied on the Internet to organize their vacations. Many rely on Tourist Web Operators. Tourist Web Operators are enterprises that offer on the web reference services for tourists. Among others, we can, for example, indicate well-known companies like Booking.com or Expedia. Booking.com was established in 1996 in Amsterdam, and has now more than two hundred offices worldwide. It is defined as “ a travel fare aggregator website and travel metasearch engine for lodging reservations ”. Expedia was founded as a division of Microsoft in October 1996. V. THE INTERNATIONAL FRAMEWORK Tourism in an international perspective Tourists travel, and travel all over the world. It is clear that Tourism – and Tourism Law – has, and has always had, international relevance. This particular characteristic requires a short analysis of the policies of international institutions. And in fact Tourism – and Tourism