Areas of responsibility will be established for tour operators and travel agents

All cases of liability to the client on the part of tour operators and travel agents are planned to be fixed in legislation. The relevant amendments were developed by the Ministry of Economic Development together with industry players. Such a bill (Izvestia has it) should be published for public discussion in the near future.

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In particular, it assumes that the travel agent should be responsible for failure to provide the necessary information about the tour, failure to transfer funds to the tour operator, inconsistent travel conditions and failure to notify the tour operator about the sale of the tour. And the tour operator is responsible for false information, inconsistencies in the services included in the travel product, as well as the actions and inaction of the travel agent.

"Cases have become more frequent when a travel agent enters into contracts with tourists, according to which consumers transfer funds to the travel agent, but the travel agent intentionally does not notify the tour operator of the concluded contracts and does not transfer the funds paid by the tourist. Responsibility in such cases lies with tour operators, which not only contradicts the current legislation of the Russian Federation, including the Civil Code, but also leads to significant financial costs for tour operators," the explanatory note to the bill says.

The Ministry of Economic Development explained to Izvestia that the amendments would reduce unreasonable financial risks for tour operators and "protect them from other people's mistakes."

Read more in the exclusive Izvestia article:

Controversial train: tour operators will be relieved of responsibility for the mistakes of travel agents