INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TOURISM, TRAVEL AND HOSPITALITY LAW a big legal uncertainty here. Giving legal advice to language travel providers is quite a challenge due to the crucial and unanswered question which law applies to their products and services. Package travel law or service law? Language travel providers have to be very careful when drafting booking conditions. Mistakes can make their terms anti-competitive with risky consequences. Lawyers should plead for legal clarification in this field, because currently we do not have clarity. The field of language travel is still a legal „grey zone“. Until we have decisions from the highest courts, travel service providers should know some legal pitfalls in classifying travel services. So let us bring more light into the darkness and follow a short journey into the world of language travel. 1. LEGAL FRAMEWORK OF THE EUROPEAN PACKAGE TRAVEL DIRECTIVE Let us first take a very brief look at the legal framework of the European Package Travel Directive (EU 2015/2302) which defines the package in der EU. The Directive requires for a package a “combination of at least two different types of travel services” (Article 3 of the Package Travel Directive). Travel services are defined as carriage of passengers, accommodation, rental of cars and any other tourist services. This definition equally applies in principle in the entire European Union as the Package travel Directive imposes maximum harmonisation. However, there are some differences between Member States, because the EU legislator allowed for minor derogations. 2. REALITY CHECK AND STATUS QUO Now let us do a reality check and look at the Status Quo. Most language travel providers act as “tour operators” in the sense of package travel law, follow the obligations of package travel law, and secure their services with mandatory insolvency insurance. But is this correct and permissible from a legal perspective? Is it mandatory? Or even anti-competitive? Is it allowed to apply Package Travel Law voluntarily?
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