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The European tourist sector is one of the most important economic sectors, but it is also a sector where cross-border transactions are becoming more and more frequent, mainly as a consequence of distance shopping (via the Internet) and the facility of movement within the European Union.
In spite of the European Directive 90/314/EC on combined travel, European legislation on tourist matters is far from being standardised. Numerous tourist services do in fact escape the Directive's field of application and therefore run the risk of being regulated very differently by the Member States.
As its name implies, the Directive is applied particularly to combined travel, namely the prior combination of two components (transport, accommodation, certain other tourist services…), put on sale at an all-inclusive price. This is the case when travel is chosen with a tour operator.
However, the Directive does not apply when just one tourist service is booked, for example a hotel room, an air ticket or a holiday apartment. And precisely on questions of cross-border tourist services, consumers almost always book services separately. There are few who will book a combined trip with a foreign tour operator, but there are more and more now who book their hotel directly or hire a car abroad. And in this case, if they encounter any problems, they will have to face regulations that vary a lot from one country to the next, and it is in no way easy for them to know their rights.
This is why the OCU, in collaboration with Belgian, Italian and Portuguese consumer organisations, forming the European group Euroconsumer, has started up this project with the aim of achieving various objectives. Firstly:
To give consumers information about their rights and obligations on questions of cross-border tourist services.
To actively deal with complaints relating to cross-border tourist problems between the four countries covered by the project (Belgium, Spain, Italy and Portugal).
To give specific assistance in presenting the complaint and with the process of resolving the international dispute using the consumer attention services within the participant organisations.
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