Tourism Law in Europe

336 TOURISM LAW IN EUROPE in fact, the European legislator has relegated the regulation of the intermediary liability within national borders. Through digital platforms41, tour operators can sell their services directly, without the help of third parties; therefore, the latter would mainly carry out their activity locally. This may explain the Directive’s choice, which considers the package market as EU-wide and does not attach the same importance to the intermediation market. The accuracy of this economic assessment can be debated, especially in the world of telematic agreements. Particularly, intermediaries seem to mean well-established companies operating in limited areas, with a local clientele and traditional sales structures. If not today, then at least in the future, tour operators and parties who, without designing package tours, offer them to a European public, using the most modern technology, may become involved in IT commerce42. Not only the travel organisation market but also the intermediary market may take on an increasingly transnational structure and, if this trend were to strengthen, the Community decision to give preference to national rules for the intermediary relationship could be called into question. National firms wishing to compete in the global marketplace react badly to the Directive’s approach. Their regulation suffers from the unevenness at the European level, imposed by each country’s regulations, with a disjointedness of the professional model, depending on the approach chosen by each individual legal system. However, this conclusion is consistent with the structure of European law and is not the heritage only of the Italian one, which, on the contrary, has faithfully implemented the Community approach. The Code is a clear expression of these choices and, at present, proposes a compact regulation that is successful, at least on the private side. If anything, the most questionable and unresolved issues are related to the described public intervention. 41 See Zampone, Riflessioni sulla direttiva (UE) 2015/1302 relativa ai pacchetti turistici e ai servizi turistici collegati, in Dir. trasp., 2018, 2 et seq.; Masseno, On the relevance of big data for the information of contracts regarding package tours or linked travel arrangements, according to the new package travel directive, in AA. VV., The New Package Travel Directive, Lisbon, 2017, 275 et seq. 42 See Bech Serrat, Selling tourism services at a distance: an analysis of the Eu consumer acquis, Berlino & Heidelberg, 2012, 23 et seq; E. Gómez Calle, En torno a una posible revisión del régimen del viaje combinado, in Cámara Lapuente (dir.) y Arroyo Amayuelas (coord.), La revisión de las normas europeas y nacionales de protección de los consumidores, Madrid, 2012, 385 et seq; A. Paniza Fullana, Nuevas fórmulas de comercialización on line de servicios turísticos: subsunción en los tipos legales y distribución de responsabilidad, Granada, 2013, 56 et seq; M. C. Berenguer Albaladejo, Nuevos horizontes en materia de viajes combinados, in Revista de derecho privado, 5/2014, 35 et seq; J. D. Camargo Gómez, Contratación electrónica de paquetes dinámicos de turismo en el ordenamiento jurídico español, in Ars iuris salmanticensis, 2/2014, 95 et seq.

RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTE4NzM5Nw==