Section containing the main information on Italian and European legislation and international conventions

This is how Legislative Decree No. 79 of 23 May 2011 was defined, containing a series of partly innovative provisions on tourism.

- This is a set of provisions implementing EU Directive 122/2008, as well as the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, formalised in New York on 13.12.2006.

-Among the most salient innovations introduced by the recent Legislative Decree:

1) the protection ensured to disabled people in the use of tourist offers without price increases (art. 3 annex 1);

2) the obligation for travel agencies to take out insurance to guarantee the exact fulfillment of the obligations undertaken towards customers with the travel contract (art. 19 annex 1);

3) the reorganisation of the legal provisions regarding the holiday voucher fund, which is now regularly financed with a portion of the 8 per thousand quotas allocated to the State (art. 27 annex 1);

4) the damage from “ruined holiday” considered as an autonomous case (art. 47 annex 1) will be related “to the time of the holiday spent in vain and to the unrepeatable nature of the lost opportunity”;

5) introduced the mediation procedure as a matter of contractual discretion between the parties (art. 67, annex 1);

6) the call center was established at the Department for Territorial Development and Competitiveness (art. 68 annex 1).

The application of the new rules will entail some difficulties but it still constitutes an attempt to bring order to a matter that has so far lacked adequate regulation.

Milan, June 30th 2011.

Attorney Giovanni Babino