The Package Travel Act and the Covid19 pandemic by Jonas Thyberg

Overall, the Swedish organisers seem to have fulflled their obligations in this aspect and to my knowledge there are only a few cases on regarding this matter at ARN. 4. Travel Guarantees Act The frst Travel Guarantee Act was introduced in Sweden in the late 1960s. The Travel Guarantee Act in force at the time of implementation of the PTD was adopted in 1972. According to this act, a traveler who purchased a package that was canceled or not completed was entitled to compensation from the travel guarantee provided by the organiser. The traveler was entitled to compensation regardless of the cause of the cancelled package. Thus, according to this act travelers have previously been able to receive compensation from the travel guarantee for trips canceled due to war situations (for example Egypt 2012), the ash cloud in 2010, bad weather or airline failure. With the introduction of the new Travel Guarantee Act, the possibilities of maintaining this further scope were discussed. However, the discussions ended up in a wording in accordance with the PTD and compensation is thus now only possible to the extent that a trip has been canceled due to the insolvency of the organiser. 4.1 Travel guarantee According to Article 17 of the PTD, Member States shall ensure that organisers established in their territory provide security for the refund of all payments made by or on behalf of travelers insofar as the relevant services are not performed because of the organiser's insolvency. If transport is included in the package travel contract, organisers shall also provide security for the travelers' repatriation. In Sweden, this obligation has been implemented by the Travel Guarantee Act (2018:1218). Section 6 of the Act stipulates that the travel guarantee for a package shall ensure that the payments made for the package are paid back to the traveler to the extent that the package travel contract is not performed due to the organiser's insolvency. If a passenger transport is included in the package, the travel guarantee must also ensure home transport, and accommodation if necessary while waiting for the home transport, to the extent that the passenger transport is not performed due to the organiser's insolvency. In the spring of 2020, many trips were canceled due to the pandemic. Since travel companies basically lost all their operations and since the Package Travel Act required a refund within 14 days, many of the Swedish organisers sufered economically. As there is no legislation that imposes an obligation on travel service providers to refund in the event of cancellation due to UEC, this meant that most travel companies faced a very difcult fnancial situation. Reimbursement in

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