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On behalf of the European Tourism Industry Coalition, representing a broad ecosystem of travel and tourism businesses across Europe, we wish to express our collective position on key issues currently under discussion during the trilogue negotiations on the revision of the Package Travel Directive (PTD).
The tourism industry plays a vital role in Europe’s economy.Almost 1 in 13 enterprises in the EU business economy belonged to tourism industries, employing 12.3 million persons, fostering regional development, and contributing to Europe’s global competitiveness. Any revision of the PTD must therefore ensure legal clarity, proportionality, and a harmonised internal market, avoiding unnecessary administrative burdens that could undermine the sector’s recovery and resilience.
Following today’s Plenary vote on the Package Travel Directive (PTD) revision, ECTAA acknowledges progress made but warns that key concerns remain. The association highlights the risk of Single Market fragmentation through diverging prepayment rules and cautions that the new 24-hour definition could create confusion for both consumers and businesses. ECTAA calls on trilogue negotiators to address these issues and ensure a balanced framework that provides strong traveller protection without overburdening SMEs.
01/09/25 ECTAA, WTAAA and travel companies call for change to No Show Rule application
Currently, these rules require travel intermediaries, when a passenger decides not to travel, not only to cancel the booking (which immediately frees the seat for resale) but also to process the refund before the flight’s departure. If this is not done, penalties are applied.
Refunding, however, is a separate process from cancelling a booking. In practice, it is often not feasible before departure or extremely burdensome when many passengers are affected. Crucially, refunding at a later stage has no negative impact on airlines.
ECTAA, WTAAA and their partners have therefore jointly called on airlines applying these rules to bring their practices in line with established industry standards.
ECTAA and WTAAA will continue to closely monitor developments on this issue in the coming weeks.
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