Package Travel Directive (EU)

The Package Travel Directive (EU) is European Union legislation governing the sale of travel packages and linked travel arrangements. Directive (EU) 2015/2302, which replaced the 1990 directive and applied from July 2018, defines when a combination of travel services becomes a regulated "package" and imposes obligations on the organiser: pre-contractual information, liability for the performance of every component, insolvency protection for prepayments and repatriation, and limits on price changes after booking.

When a package exists

A package generally arises when at least two different types of travel service — accommodation, passenger transport, car rental, or another significant tourist service — are combined for the same trip and sold at an inclusive price or under a single booking process. Critically, this can happen across websites: if a traveller books a hotel and is then transferred to a partner site where their name, payment or email details are passed along and a second service is booked within 24 hours, the arrangement can qualify as a package or a linked travel arrangement, each carrying different duties.

Example

An OTA sells a three-night hotel stay and, in the same checkout flow, an airport transfer and a museum pass at a combined price. That is a package: the OTA becomes the organiser, is liable if the transfer never turns up, must hold insolvency protection covering the traveller's prepayment, and cannot raise the price by more than 8% or on grounds other than the narrow ones the directive allows.

A hotel selling only rooms, with breakfast and parking included, is not creating a package — those are ancillaries to a single travel service, not a combination of different service types.

Why it matters

The directive determines who carries legal and financial responsibility when part of a trip fails, and it is one of the main reasons dynamic packaging is structured the way it is. Platforms that combine services take on organiser liability and the cost of insolvency cover, so many deliberately design flows that stop short of the package threshold — separate baskets, no data transfer, no inclusive price.

For hotels, the practical exposure comes from partnerships. Bundling a room with tours, transfers or experiences sold under one price can make the hotel the organiser of a package, with obligations it may not have budgeted for. Reviewing how bundles are constructed and priced, and what the intermediary's terms say about organiser status, is a standard part of commercial due diligence in the EU.

Related

• Dynamic Packaging — the commercial practice the directive regulates
• Merchant of Record (MoR) — a related question of who contracts with, and is liable to, the traveller
• DSA (Digital Services Act) — a parallel EU regime covering platform obligations
• Tourist Tax (City Tax) — another jurisdiction-specific compliance layer in European distribution