Tourism Law in Europe: Lithuanian Perspective Danguolė Bublienė1 Ieva Navickaitė-Sakalauskienė2 1. Introduction; 2. The First Dimension of Tourism: Legal Regulation and Policy Formation of Tourism in Lithuania; 2.1. Legal regulation of tourism; 2.2. Tourism policy; 3. The Second Dimension of Tourism: Institutional Framework of Tourism in Lithuania; 4. The Third Dimension of Tourism: Tourism Services from the Service Providers’ and Tourists’ Perspective; 4.1. Tourist’s perspective; 4.2. Tourism services providers’ perspective; 5. Some Legislative Initiatives during COVID-19; 6. Conclusions. 1. INTRODUCTION The desire to travel away from home is inherent in humans. A long time ago, it was a privilege, but today, travelling is available almost to everyone, as international mass tourism emerged and expanded in Europe after World War II. Later, the tourism sector experienced the huge impact of e-commerce, as travel and tourism products became one of the most traded items on the Internet. In 2015, 6 out of 10 EU residents made one or more trips3, in the following year, the European Union welcomed 500 million tourist arrivals (overnight tourists), and it is estimated that, in 2018, 64.1% of the EU’s population aged 15 or over took part in tourism for personal purposes4. These numbers tended to increase. In the European Union, tourism contributes 10% to its GDP and creates jobs for 26 million people – through its direct, indirect and induced effects in the 1 Associate Professor at Vilnius University. 2 Lecturer at Mykolas Romeris University. 3 UNWO. European Union Tourism Trends, p. 9, available in https://www.e-unwto.org/doi/pdf/10.18111/9789284419470. 4 Statistical data available in https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Tourism_statistics.
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