The EU is moving to protect independent tourists, but can the industry be regulated, asks Conor Pope
The internet has transformed the holiday landscape over the past 15 years. Where once people pored over thumbnail pictures of potential destinations in brochures before effectively throwing themselves at the mercy of travel agents, and praying they didn’t end up in a kip, they can now trawl online picture galleries and detailed, first-hand accounts of all but the least-visited destinations.
The middlemen have become an optional extra with airlines taking web-only bookings and hotels selling directly to tourists online.
Depending on where and when you go and how much time you have to research deals, a DIY holiday can knock up to 25 per cent off the price of an identical package being offered by a tour operator – although, to be fair, it is impossible sometimes to match the travel agents’ deals, especially at the lower end of the market.
One fly in the ointment, however, particularly in a time of recession, has been the absence of a safety net for the DIY traveller. What happens if an airline or hotel you book with goes bust, taking your cash with them? Credit-card chargebacks might allow you to get some money back in some circumstances but chargebacks are of little value if you find yourself stranded in Malaga airport with no flight home on a summer’s Sunday evening.
While an EU Directive published in the mid 1990s sets out consumers’ rights on information, cancellations, substandard service and insolvency for package holidays, it offers little comfort to consumers who book holidays independently.
The good news is that this could be about to change, with an announcement last week from EU Consumer Affairs Commissioner Meglena Kuneva that she intends to use legislation to extend the protection to people booking holidays independently of tour operators. The bad news is that it could take years before the changes start to have any impact.
Simon Nugent of the Irish Travel Agents Association says that a move on improving consumer protection was long overdue and that his association has been lobbying with the commission for years to introduce it, even though it would remove one of his industry’s strongest selling points – security. “While we have an advantage in that we offer consumers more protection, we would prefer to operate on a basis where we are not the only people expected to absorb the costs associated with that protection,” he says.
Before any new directive for the internet age can be shepherded through, there will be a consultative process involving the major stakeholders in the tourism industry, most notably the airlines, car-hire companies and hotels who will be affected by the new proposals.
The CEO of the Consumers’ Association of Ireland Dermott Jewell has welcomed the moves but predicts that the major players in the DIY travel sector would be lobbying hard to ensure that they were not too negatively affected by any changes to the law.
“The difficulties are there for everyone to see, ” he says. “While it might be easy to implement consumer-friendly changes in big businesses and airlines, it will become more difficult to police when it comes to small businesses. We are not only dealing with companies, we are dealing with individuals. Think of all the Irish people who own holiday homes in Spain, for instance, which they rent out – how can they be regulated?”
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