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Travlaw’s Stephen Mason says agents will be liable for “miss-descriptions” of holidays
‘Hapless agents risk being liable under revised PTD’
LEGAL EXPERTS WARN AGENTS WILL NEED TO TAKE CARE TO AVOID LIABILITY UNDER THE NEWPACKAGE TRAVEL RULES. IAN TAYLOR REPORTS
Industry lawyers say travel retailers face “a real challenge” in avoiding liability for holiday arrangements under the new Package Travel Directive.
Claire Ingleby, director of
mb Law, told an Abta travel law seminar in London last week: “The new expanded definition of a package will make it a challenge for traders who don’t want to sell packages. OTAs [online travel agents] are likely to find this particularly problematic. It will create a lot of software challenges.”
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travelweekly.co.uk 19 May 2016 She added: “Acting as just a
retailer or intermediary will be a real challenge where no other trader is accepting responsibility for arrangements. “It doesn’t matter what the
small print says [in terms and conditions], a selection of two or more qualifying travel services from a single point of sale will be a package. A great deal of care will be required in advertising, sales prices and contract documents.” Abta senior solicitor Susan Deer told the seminar: “We focus on
agent versus principal to establish liability at the moment. That is going to become less relevant.” Under the new directive, to come
into effect from 2018, Deer said: “You can be an agent and also an organiser [of package holidays].” She warned it would not be
enough for a company to declare it acted as an agent, saying: “We need to move away from thinking of booking conditions as small print and toward transparency.” Deer added: “You don’t want to
fall into selling packages because you failed to give customers the correct information.” Travlaw senior partner Stephen Mason warned: “There will be
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