Israel – Hamas War Taking Toll on Package Travel Organizers

The Israel-Hamas war has prompted the European Travel Agents’ and Tour Operators’ Association (ECTAA) to reiterate its call for regulations that will strengthen traveler rights across the travel chain and ensure the harmonization of the current Package Travel Directive (PTD).

According to ECTAA, the war has created disruption affecting not only travelers but also travel agents and tour operators. Package travel organizers in particular are now faced with big challenges.

“The current situation shows once again that the we urgently need a better harmonization between the Package Travel Directive and the EU Air Passenger Rights Regulation. If the European Commission wants to effectively protect travelers, such a harmonization should be a priority for the upcoming revisions,” said ECTAA President Frank Oostdam.

The current situation in Israel and possible further complications in the region will force tour operators to massively cancel booked package travels. They will then have to reimburse customers often before getting prepayments reimbursed by service suppliers.

According to the Package Travel Directive, once a package organizer cancels a travel package, a customer is entitled to a refund within 14 days.

However in order to do this, service suppliers (eg airlines etc) must refund to tour operators immediately. ECTAA goes on to add however, that during the Covid pandemic, the main reason package organizers could not refund their customers stemmed from their inability to recover traveler payments from service providers.

Photo source: European Commission / © Synthex/Adobe Stock

In the current situation, some airlines are offering only vouchers for cancelled flights instead of cash refunds. To prevent this, an obligation to refund a package traveler should also apply to service providers who hold prepayments, said ECTAA in its statement; an obligation that should be applied to all services that are part of a package, in particular the air transport segment.

Prepayment refunds should be processed in the same way the payment of the services composing the package was done. If applied, travel intermediaries who do not hold the prepayments will be in a position to refund the travelers back and fulfil their refunds obligations. This can be achieved through amendments within the Package Travel Directive, said ECTAA, which represents some 80,000 travel agents and tour operators in Europe.