Moldovan parliament votes for extension of term for return of payments for tour packages

Chisinau, 21 May /MOLDPRES/ - The parliament today approved a draft law which provides for the extension, from 14 to 540 days, of the term of return of the payment for tour packages, if contracts are cancelled before the travel starts.    

According to the draft’s authors, the measure proposed will give the economic agents from the tourism sector, hit by COVID-19, possibility to fulfill their contractual obligations, including of returning the payments to the clients who demanded or will demand this. The measure will be applied only to the contracts concluded on the period October 2019 – 17 March 2020, when the emergency state was established.       

The draft was worked out following proposals put forward by the National Association of Tourism Agencies (ANAT), given numerous applications on cancelation of tour packages. At the same time, the foreign partners of the native tourist companies refuse to return the payments collected in a term shorter than 540 days. In these conditions, the tourist agencies of Moldova are not able to return the money to the applicants in the term seen by the national legislation and run the risk of being sued at law.   

On the period October 2019-March 2020, the local tourist companies had revenues worth almost 5 million euros for the tour packages partially or fully paid for about 25,000 clients.