IMPACT ON TOURISM CONTRACTS ACCORDING TO ITALIAN LAW 175 speculate or infer, because the Court of Justice’s position is unpredictable, given the emergency, and it could be influenced by the fact that other States have adopted similar measures to prevent the organisers from going bankrupt. If several countries resorted to these remedies, the circumstance should not go unnoticed, in the face of the very strong tensions in this market. In essence, the Italian legislator has tried to facilitate the organisers by reducing and postponing the financial consequences of the impossibility of travelling, with a significant prejudice for tourists forced to use their credit in a limited period and to confirm their relations with the same enterprise. Not surprisingly, in a recent interview, an administrator of one of the most important Italian travel companies did not complain about any particular concern about the fate of his organisation, only announcing the offer of packages to be performed in the national territory, due to the allegedly poor willingness of consumers to take long journeys. 3. TRANSPORT CONTRACTS In fact, Art. 28, paragraph 1, of the Decree-Law No. 9 of 2020, states that all transports arrangements and travels that should have been carried out in the so-called quarantine, home-stay or hospitalisation periods, arranged for passengers, as well as those departing from or arriving in Italy up to 13 April were terminated automatically by force of law. There is an absolute presumption that, in such cases, the impossibility of the trip depended on the contagion, and the customer only has to declare that he found himself in one of these situations, a fact which is easy to prove by giving notice within thirty days from when the isolation phase ceasing or the departure date. In the fifteen days following the receipt of the notice, the carrier can choose to either return the price or issue the so-called “voucher”; the same principle applies to cruises. The carrier indeed always chooses the second option and prefers to offer a package or service, similar to the original one, at a later time, rather than return the payment, with the risk of finding itself in economic hardships later on. The company assumes a similar commitment towards the travel organiser, who, in this way, is not affected by this component of its expenses, and the economic weight falls only on the carrier since the circumstances making the journey impossible also affect its obligation to provide a service. Therefore, if the organiser issues the so-called “voucher” to his client, the carrier will, in turn, be bound to offer the customer a credit to be collected within a year, with an obvious advantage, because, unlike what happens to the consumer, this credit limits the overall costs of business for the company.
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