Tourism Ministry: Package travel arrangements 100 percent guaranteed

The ordinance for the transposition of Directive 2302/2015 on the package travel guarantee, a legislative draft adopted by the government on Thursday, will allow the complete refunding of package tours paid for and unfulfilled by tour operators, as well as the urgent repatriation of tourists left stranded out of the country because of the tour operator's going bankrupt, the Tourism Ministry said on Thursday. 

"We succeeded today in doing what no one before had the courage to do. Although we had this danger looming over our heads since 2014, following the first directive compelling us to step up protection measures for tourists, no minister had the guts to implement the 100 percent refunding of packages paid for by tourists and left unfulfilled by troubled travel agencies. The message is clear: 'We no longer allow Romanian tourists to be stolen!' Up until now, travel agencies could sell travel packages running in the millions of euro, and if they ended up in insolvency, the claimants were referred to the insurance policy which, according to the current legislation, is worth 50,000 dollars. In other words, the deceived Romanians did not get compensation, they were left without both the money and the holiday. That's the only way we can avoid getting into situations like the Omnia case, where the travel agency's owner used the people's money for other purposes and not even to this day have the tourists recovered their damages," Tourism Minister Bogdan Trif said in a release to AGERPRES. 

According to the cited source, the operator may choose the form of guarantee from insurance, bank guarantee letter or mutual fund, solutions that can be applied jointly or individually. What really matters is that the package is insured. "With the implementation of the ordinance, the ministry introduced new protection measures for tourists, in the first place the full reimbursement of travel packages is guaranteed for the event of the travel agencies' insolvency, and the new bill provides for the urgent repatriation of the tourists left outside the country due to the agency's going insolvent," the release said. At the same time, as a further protection measure for tourists, the ministry also changed the licensing requirements for tourism agencies. Thus, the operators holding tourism licenses for the organization of travel activities are required to have a minimum share capital of 25,000 lei, as to 200 lei at present.