PI Brief Update

When is a travel agent more than an agent? - Katherine Deal, 3 Hare Court

03/04/12. Few personal injury practitioners will not have come across the Package Travel, Package Holiday and Package Tours Regulations 1992 at some point.  As readers will know, all (or virtually all) tour operators incorporate them more or less word for word into their booking conditions, and if they do not, their provisions will be implied into every package holiday contract.  They have the effect of ensuring that a holiday maker injured, killed or falling ill in the course of a package can sue the other party to his holiday contract directly in the English courts under English law for injuries arising from the negligent provision of services or accommodation which were part of the package. In effect caught by a modified form of vicarious liability, the tour operator cannot escape liability merely on the basis that those services were provided by a foreign supplier.  

So far so good.  Where a would-be holiday maker purchases an off the shelf holiday with a major tour operator there is unlikely to be any dispute that it is a package within the meaning of the Regulations and the tour operator is the other party to the contract.  However many holiday arrangements do not fall into this category.  In the recent case of Titshall v Qwerty Travel [2011] EWCA Civ 1569 the Court of Appeal analysed again how to determine whether the holiday in the course of which injury was sustained was a package within the meaning of the Regulations.

The judgment is likely to have far reaching ramifications for travel agents, who traditionally sell holidays on behalf of principals, but do not generally (or willingly) accept responsibility themselves for the proper performance of the services sold...

Image ©iStockphoto.com/Elerium

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