Revision of the package travel directive

Background

In November 2023, the European Commission adopted a proposal for a Directive to amend the Package Travel Directive. The objective of the revision is to make the protection of travellers more effective at all times, including in crisis situations, while improving the functioning of the internal market in the package travel sector.

The Package Travel Directive covers pre-arranged package holidays, but also customised packages, where the traveller chooses different types of travel services (transport, accommodation, car rental, etc.), online or offline. Packages provide broad protection for the traveller, and the organiser of the package is fully responsible for the performance of all included travel services and is obliged to obtain insolvency protection to cover travellers' payments and their repatriation. In addition, the Directive provides certain protection for linked travel arrangements, for example where a traveller books a flight on one website and is then invited to book a hotel or rent a car on a different website.

Key points

The EESC:

• considers a revision of the Package Travel Directive (PTD) both timely and necessary, and in general welcomes the revised Directive, which aims to codify voucher schemes and provide clear information and legal guarantees to travellers, while giving more flexibility to travel businesses;
• welcomes the removal of the overlap between packages and Linked Travel Arrangements (LTAs). This means that when different types of travel services are purchased at the same time for the same trip or holiday and from the same point of sale, this will be treated as a package;
• is, however, of the opinion that the proposed timelines to refund travellers do not sufficiently consider the cashflow limitations of service providers in exceptional situations, as experienced recently during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Additional information

Section: Single Market, Production and Consumption (INT)

Opinion number: INT/1049

Opinion type: Mandatory

Referral: COM(2023) 905 final 2023/0435 COD COM(2023) 905 final 2023/0435 COD

Rapporteur: Philip Von Brockdorff (Group II - Malta)

Date of adoption by section: 11 April 2024

Result of the vote: 78 in favour, 0 against, 0 abstentions

Date of adoption in plenary: 24-25 April 2024

Result of the vote: 134 in favour, 7 against, 6 abstentions

Contact

Marco Pezzani

Press Officer

Tel.: +32 2 546 9793 | Mob: +32 470 881 903

E-mail: marco.pezzani@eesc.europa.eu

Silvia Staffa

Administrator

Tel.: +32 546 8378

E-mail: silvia.staffa@eesc.europa.eu