TOUR ORGANISERS AND SUPPLIERS 81 circumstances. Again, we may think of flight bans or hotel operation bans, for instance, but also situations when due to a high risk of infection and taking into regard the organiser’s duties of protection and care it would be unreasonable to adhere to the provision of the contractual services. 2.3. Consequences of termination Regardless whether it is the traveller or the organiser who exercises one of the above mentioned termination right, according to Article 12(4), and Article 11(5) respectively, provide for an obligation of the organiser to reimburse the traveller without undue delay and in any event not later than 14 days after the package travel contract is terminated. This obligation, of course, causes economical detriments to the organiser if the payments made by or on behalf of the traveller have, fully or (at least) partly, gone to service suppliers. It is therefore crucial for organisers to be able to recover at least some of these payments from the suppliers – and that is were the struggle between the two commences. 3. THE IH&RA/UFTAA CODE OF PRACTICE The IH&RA2/UFTAA3 Code of Practice of 1999, which replaced a previous code of 1979, attempts to codify basic principles, which, for many years, have governed international relations between hotels and travel agents. It refers to force majeure as circumstances that are unforeseen, irresistible and beyond the control of the party invoking the situation. It provides that such circumstances exonerate the respective party form their obligations without having to pay any compensation4. However, it is not always the party finding it “impossible to fulfil his/her obligation” due to force majeure which is the one that wants to withdraw from the contract. In the scenarios that will be highlighted in the following, the respective supplier will often claim to still be in the position to provide his services – but due to the change of circumstances caused by the pandemic the tour operator will no longer be interested in using these services for his customers. 2 International Hotel & Restaurant Association, www.ih-ra.org. 3 United Federation of Travel Agents’ Associations, www.uftaa.org. 4 Article 26 of the IH&RA/UFTAA Code of Practice on the Relations between Hoteliers and Travel Agents.
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