Book Review: The New Package Travel Directive

Editors: V. Franceschelli, Professor, University of Milan Bicocca ; F. Morandi, Professor, University of Sardinia; C. Torres, Professor Adjunct, Estoril Higher Institute for Tourism and Hotel Studies [ESHTE].

Publisher: ESHTE/INATEL, Portugal, 2017. 596 pages.

Reviewer: Hermes Navarro del Valle, Chief of Tourism Investment; Costa Rica Tourism Board, San José, Costa Rica; Member of United Nations World Tourism Organisation [UNWTO] Working Group on the draft Convention on the Protection of Tourists etc.

As tourism becomes each day more important for the economies of the different countries of the world, in addition to more competition and new technologies, the rules that govern tourism –not only on a national or regional level – but on a global one as well, become ever more important.

Today travel is more than the activity of the sixties, seventies or eighties. It is an exploding activity that moves millions of people and dollars daily. Its success affects national economics and politics. With new technologies it has become impersonal, where ones deals with a computer program and not a real person.

This universal success of tourism has led the international community to make special efforts to create clear, fair and uniform rules for the tourism. Not only for the protection of travelers, but also for companies involved in tourism. And again, not only applicable nationally, but regionally or globally as well.

The book, New Package Travel Directive, is a comprehensive and serious study of such rules. The editors and contributors guide us thru the different areas that are covered by the EU Package Travel Directive. From how the different concepts are defined, to court decisions on the precious law that will affected the work ahead, and the implementation by EU member-states of the new rules.

This book also gives us a clear perspective on how the tourist contract is to be interpreted, protected and executed. The book does not fall short in signaling the problems that will arise from the new rules.

The book is therefore, not only an important work for scholars and students, but for Government representatives, lawyers in the tourism and contract fields, and of course for the private sector that should use it in the future to guide their contracts with travelers and companies.

The new EU Package Travel Directive has also been an important instrument of reference for the works that the UNWTO is doing to create similar rules in an international convention applicable to all its member-states.

As we move forward in the following years and tourism keeps growing in almost all economies, the rules and their understanding – as set out and explained in this book- will become more important and relevant. Having a clear concept of the EU Directive will help forge future international, regional and national laws that will complement those already in force.

We can only congratulate ESHTE and INATEL Foundation in Portugal for putting together this book. It will without doubt be of great help to the tourism industry.

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