Cruising towards new travel legislation

How will the upcoming travel Directive change the practice of law in the travel sector?

John Snyder, assistant general counsel at Carnival UK, compares the forthcoming legislation with the current legislation and explains that the change to practice in this area for commercial lawyers is likely to be minimal.

What day-to-day practical problems are you currently experiencing in your industry?

Many pieces of legislation affect the cruise industry.

Since our business is consumer-facing, we need to comply with the same legislation as many other businesses in the UK—whether it be related to the level of credit card charges applied, Committee of Advertising Practice code compliance or consumer protection regulations.

In addition, we have an international maritime and a travel law angle and, in the case of the latter, we have the Package Travel, Package Holidays and Package Tours (Amendment) Regulations 1992 and Civil Aviation (Air Travel Organiser’s Licensing) Regulations 2012, which shape the way we sell our holidays.

A new package travel Directive will soon replace the Package Travel, Package Holidays and Package Tours (Amendment) Regulations 1992. This change has caused a great deal of concern in travel law circles as the scope and effect of the proposed changes to the law have been hammered out. Starting from some radical proposals, such as making travel agents responsible for liabilities to consumers in relation to holidays sold by travel agents but provided by third-party tour operators, the new law has fortunately had the rough edges shaved off and it is looking like it will be reasonably similar to the current law.

However, part of what the new law will do is to try to catch existing holiday arrangements within the definition of a ‘package’ to offer consumers more protection, in the case of insolven