The Legal Impacts of COVID-19 in the Travel, Tourism and Hospitality Industry

THE INTERNATIONAL CODE FOR THE PROTECTION OF TOURISTS 362 Therefore, the main features are the travel outside of the usual environment, which must include at least an overnight stay, and the impossibility of the stay to be extended indefinitely but for less than a year. The definition of tourism includes business or leisure travel, as well as family visits, but excludes cases of paid employment at the destination. By contrast to the definition of tourist, there is usually a second definition, that of excursionist, which the Code refers as: “a person taking a trip which does not include an overnight stay to a main destination outside of his/her usual environment.”. However, the Code makes no distinction between the two, applying the same regime by stating that: “For the purposes of this Code any reference to “tourist” constitutes at the same time a reference to “excursionist”.”. The third definition concerns the tourism service provider, who can be a natural person or a legal person (privately or publicly owned) that “sells, offers to sell, supplies, or undertakes to supply a tourism service, single or combined in a package travel, to the tourist.”. Incomprehensibly, the combination of services through a linked travel arrangement, one of the major innovations of Directive 2015/2302, is omitted. The fourth definition concerns the emergency situations, making reference to unusual, extraordinary or unforeseeable circumstances. In turn, an emergency situation can be “natural or man-made”, for instance, a volcano eruption or a terrorist attack, and is “beyond the control of the host country, [resulting] in the need for assistance on a large scale.”. The fifth definition, the unavoidable and extraordinary circumstances, entirely coincides with that of the New Package Travel Directive: “a situation beyond the control of the party who invokes such a situation and the consequences of which could not have been avoided even if all reasonable measures had been taken.” . Lastly, the country of origin is defined as “the State Party of which the tourist has nationality or where at the time of the unavoidable and extraordinary circumstance or the emergency situation the tourist has his/her principal and permanent residence.”.

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