Package tour
A package holiday is a journey in which a tour operator promises to provide a package of travel services at a single total price, and in his own name.
The first package tour, organized by the true Baptist preacher Thomas Cook on July 5, 1841 train travel for English workers from Leicester to Loughborough, where the cost of the trip and the food in the price were included. The first foreign package tour organized Cook on 17 May 1861 for English workers by train and boat to Paris.
Definition
A precise, but not universally accepted definition contained in Article 2 of the EU Directive 90/314/EEC of 13 July 1990:
" The pre-arranged combination of at least two of the following, which is sold for a total price or offered for sale, and when the service takes longer than 24 hours or includes overnight accommodation:
- Transportation
- Accommodation
- Other tourist services not ancillary to transport or accommodation and accounting for a significant proportion of the package. "
The implementation in national law was different: In Germany there is no legal definition of "package". Under Austrian law, the term "package" is defined differently in the two main legal basis, which has not yet been rehabilitated by law: In § 31b Consumer Protection Act, the term is, " tour operator " defined differently from the mentioned EU Directive. In § 1 Z2 the exercise requirements for the travel agency industry, however, the term is taken 'package' within the meaning of paragraph 1 of the Directive without deviation.
The Decision club tour / Gonçalves Garrido, Case C-400/00, of 30 April 2002, the European Court has found that the individual compilation of several individual services to the customer's request met by a travel agency the concept of package tour. This judgment is based, however, on the circumstances that Portuguese travel agencies have a different legal status and in this particular case, the travel agency had provided the services in its own name. So it depends on the occurrence of a travel agency, whether it is a tour operator or travel agent. Thus, the judgment has only limited impact on German and Austrian case law in the travel industry.
As a special case of the package is considered the "block travel " can be combined individually in the individual components from a given catalog. This combination happens in real time, it is called " dynamic packaging ". Legally, the block travel of the package is to be equated. The opposite of holiday packages and travel block is the Individual Travel, in which the customer books the individual services such as transport, accommodation or meals on their own by their respective service providers.
Legal treatment
On holiday packages found in Germany the travel contract enforcement, which displaces the rules applicable in individual travel service, factory and tenancy regulations.
Relevant sources of law is primarily for this purpose in Germany § § 651a et seq, and the Regulation on the information requirements of tour operators from 14 November 1994 ( Federal Law Gazette 3436 ). In particular, claims for compensation against the tour operator within one month of the contractual end of the trip are to be asserted.
In Austria, the legal provisions for package tours are the Consumer Protection Act ( Consumer Protection Act) § 31 ff and enshrined in the exercise rules for travel agents.
The above provisions are significantly affected by the already mentioned EU Directive, its implementation should be in the national laws (which is not in any EU country equally well managed ).
As a major advantage of the involvement of a tour operator, the wider consumer protection applies when using the travel law. So the customer has in the case of defects - first and urgent - only one contact (namely, the tour operator ) and relatively clearly defined warranty claims, which are summarized in tables like the Frankfurter table or the Kempten Reisemängel table. For defects which relate to the carriage by air, tour operators have, however, sometimes in individual cases or already in their Terms and suggests that any claims for compensation in respect of passenger rights are to be sent directly to the respective airline.
The customer's payments are secured by the obligation of the tour operator to hand over a travel insurance certificate at the latest before the first payment.
Market significance
2011 made travel packages (including traveling block ) according to the travel analysis in Germany with a market share of 43% off, compared to 2005, a decrease of 5 percentage points (based holiday trips of 5 days duration).