The Package Travel Act and the Covid19 pandemic Jonas Thyberg1 1. The Package Travel legislation. 1.1 The Swedish Act on Package Travel. 1.2 Cancellation by the traveler due to unavoidable and extraordinary circumstances. 1.2.1 Burden of proof. 1.2.2 Extraordinary circumstance. 1.2.3 Unavoidable circumstance. 1.2.4 Significantly affecting the performance of the package. 1.2.5 At what time should the assessment be made? 1.2.6 The traveler’s personal circumstances. 1.2.7 The cancellation fee must be reasonable. 1.2.8 Refund of the total price paid by the traveler. 2. Performance of the package. 2.1 Packages cancelled by the organiser. 2.2 Packages cancelled by traveler after the start of the package. 2.3 Obligation to arrange for alternative transport and accommodation. 2.4 Assistance to travelers in difficulty. 3. Travel Guarantees Act. 3.1 Travel guarantee. 4. Conclusions. On August 1, 2018, a new Package Travel Act2 (PTA) entered into force in Sweden. The act replaced the previous Package Travel Act from 19943. The new act implements the Package Travel Directive of 20154 (PTD). Since the legislation only had been in force for just over a year and since the act only covered packages purchased as from August 1, 2018, the PTA had not yet been applied in that many cases when Covid19 hit the world in the beginning of 2020. The outbreak of Covid19 thus put the new legislation to a test. In this contribution I will present a short overview of some of the provisions of the PTA and analyze the case law in Sweden regarding the Covid19 pandemic. In Sweden, almost all disputes between a consumer and an organizer or travel agent, is tried by the National Board for Consumer Complaints5, only a very few DOI https://doi.org/10.60559/ijtthl2023-016 1 Member of the Swedish Bar Association, Partner at Konrad Advokater 2 Paketreselag (2018:1217) (Package Travel Act 2018) 3 Lag (1992:1672) om paketresor (Package Travel Act 1994) 4 Directive (EU) 2015/2302 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 November 2015 on package travel and linked travel arrangements, amending Regulation (EC) No 2006/2004 and Directive 2011/83/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council and repealing Council Directive 90/314/EEC 5 Allmänna Reklamationsnämnden, www.arn.se
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