The European Travel Agents’ and Tour Operators’ Association (ECTAA) has called for “better and coherent” legislation to effectively enforce the rights of travellers.
In a statement released today (10 November), the ECTAA – of which the ITAA is an affiliate – said that the pandemic had highlighted the the shortcomings of existing EU legislations governing the sale of travel and transport services.
In 2021 the European Commission has announced that it will review the existing Package Travel Directive and consider a possible revision of the text. With this mind, the ECTAA has published its position on the upcoming review of the Package Travel Directive (PTD).
The ECTAA wants to see the legislation improved so it aligns the standards of protection of other passenger legislations (in particular Air Passenger rights regulation) to the ones of the PTD to resolve conflicting provisions.
Secondly the importance to legislate about Business-to-Business relations to allow the travel ecosystem to keep functioning is case of disruptive events.
The ECTAA is urging the European Commission to set up the “long-awaited and much needed” protection against airlines’ insolvency and provide for the obligation for service providers holding package traveller’s prepayment to swiftly refund package organiser, so they can in turn refund their customers.
Said Pawel Niewiadomski, President of ECTAA “In the end, the crisis has shown that travellers protection could be improved only if the whole ecosystem works in a harmonised way. This is why air passengers’ protection and Business-to-Business relationships have to be up to package travel standards”.
