{"id":120716,"date":"2018-08-06T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-08-05T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rhn.ro\/tour-operators-claim-tourist-package-guarantee-ordinance-fails-to-solve-the-problem\/"},"modified":"2026-03-28T09:48:54","modified_gmt":"2026-03-28T07:48:54","slug":"tour-operators-claim-tourist-package-guarantee-ordinance-fails-to-solve-the-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rhn.ro\/en\/tour-operators-claim-tourist-package-guarantee-ordinance-fails-to-solve-the-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"Tour Operators Claim Tourist Package Guarantee Ordinance Fails to Solve the Problem"},"content":{"rendered":"
The ordinance through which the Ministry of Tourism transposed the European directive regarding tourist packages does not solve the guarantee issue, major Romanian tour operators have stated. They claim that the normative act appeared much too late, ignoring all industry amendments, and lacks the underlying mechanisms to make it functional, which is why it risks being „sanctioned” by the European Commission, an institution that the National Association of Travel Agencies (ANAT) has already notified. <\/div>\n
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Tour operators maintain that tourists’ money will not be truly guaranteed even after the Government approved the European directive regarding the sale of tourist packages via an ordinance, which obliges states to fully secure the funds paid in advance by tourists and which should have been implemented as of July 1st. <\/div>\n
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Although the Ministry of Tourism ensures that it took the industry’s opinion into account, tour operators say the normative act was drafted without considering absolutely any industry amendment.<\/div>\n
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Dragos Anastasiu from TUI Travel Center stated that the directive should have been transposed by January 1, 2018, and applied from July 1 of this year. Consequently, Romania and, implicitly, the Ministry of Tourism, had no alternative and were obliged to take this step.<\/div>\n
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Dragos Anastasiu asserts that, despite the fact that Romania could have transposed the text of the new European directive via copy-paste, the authorities „managed to adapt it in a ‘mioritic’ fashion,” making it, in some places, incompatible with the meaning of the original text. Thus, transferring responsibility from organizers outside Romania’s borders (but within the EU) to Romanian retailers, in the form decided by the Romanian government, is not only useless but also illegal, says the businessman. "Therefore, I expect Romania to soon enter exactly that infringement procedure it tried to escape at the last second,” Dragos Anastasiu specified.<\/div>\n
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The second major problem with the transposition of the European directive is, in the businessman’s opinion, the fact that, along with it, the guarantee mechanism imposed by the Romanian government just 7-8 months ago\u2014namely the guarantee fund\u2014was repealed. And this happened under conditions where there is currently no other mechanism on the market adapted to the new requirements, specifically for the full reimbursement of money paid in advance by tourists to agencies in case of insolvency. <\/div>\n
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He claims that the Ministry of Tourism is creating false expectations, namely that all travel agency services will be 100% „guaranteed.” In reality, even assuming there will be a mechanism to ensure 100%, this refers strictly to those services that include at least two elements (accommodation\/food and transport, for example) and by no means individual elements (accommodation\/food), which represent the majority of services offered by agencies worldwide.<\/div>\n
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Alin Burcea also believes that the ordinance proposed by Trif solves nothing, and even ruins what his predecessor, Mircea Dobre, the former Minister of Tourism, had built.<\/div>\n
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ANAT and Dobre had worked on a draft ordinance that was ready in December 2017, through which the guarantee of tourists’ money was ensured by a fund managed by the FNGCIMM (National Credit Guarantee Fund for SMEs), i.e., by the state, the only body with some experience in managing funds.<\/div>\n
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In January 2018, Burcea explains, the new Minister of Finance, Eugen Teodorovici, no longer wanted the state to manage the agencies’ guarantees.<\/div>\n
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Source: Profit<\/a><\/p>\n

Frequently Asked Questions<\/h3>\n

What does the new ordinance regarding tourist packages entail?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The ordinance transposes an EU directive requiring states to fully guarantee advance payments made by tourists for travel packages in the event of insolvency.<\/p>\n

Why are Romanian tour operators dissatisfied with the new law?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Operators argue the law was passed too late, ignored industry input, and abolished previous guarantee funds without establishing a functional new mechanism.<\/p>\n

Which services are actually covered by the 100% guarantee?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The guarantee strictly applies to packages combining at least two services (e.g., accommodation and transport), not to individual services like standalone hotel bookings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The ordinance through which the Ministry of Tourism transposed the European directive regarding tourist packages does not solve the guarantee issue, major Romanian tour operators have stated. They claim that the normative act appeared much too late, ignoring all industry amendments, and lacks the underlying mechanisms to make it functional, which is why it risks…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":67377,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2858],"tags":[],"thb-sponsors":[],"class_list":["post-120716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tourism"],"article_style_override":"","post-style":"","post_via":"","post-top-image":"https:\/\/rhn.ro\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/turism-2.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhn.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhn.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhn.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhn.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rhn.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120716\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhn.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhn.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhn.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhn.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120716"},{"taxonomy":"thb-sponsors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhn.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/thb-sponsors?post=120716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}