§ 42. Travel guarantee for package holidays and linked travel arrangements
Machine-translated from Norwegian. The Norwegian text is the one that applies. Read the original in Norwegian.Norsk English العربية Polski Українська
In brief
- Organisers (arrangører) of package holidays (pakkereiser) must provide a travel guarantee (reisegaranti), and retailers (formidlere) of linked arrangements must do so for the services they take payment for.
- The guarantee is issued by a bank or insurance company to the Norwegian Travel Guarantee Fund (Reisegarantifondet); the fund can accept other security.
- A guarantee from another EEA (EØS) country is treated as equal to a travel guarantee under Norwegian law.
- Traders (næringsdrivende) pay an annual fee (årsgebyr) to the Norwegian Travel Guarantee Fund.
The text of the law (unofficial translation)
§ 42. Travel guarantee for package holidays and linked travel arrangements (sammensatte reisearrangementer) etc.
What does this mean?
This section requires package holiday organisers to provide a travel guarantee. A travel guarantee is security ensuring that the traveller (reisende) gets their money back if the trader goes bankrupt (konkurs). For linked travel arrangements, the obligation applies to the person who facilitates the arrangement, but only for the services that person takes payment for. In addition, traders must pay an annual fee to the Norwegian Travel Guarantee Fund.
The guarantee is designed like this: a bank or an insurance company issues it in favour of the Norwegian Travel Guarantee Fund. The bank or company undertakes to pay out to the fund on demand, up to the guarantee amount. The fund can also accept other adequate security, so the guarantee does not necessarily have to be a bank guarantee.
If the trader is established in another EEA country, a guarantee provided there is treated on an equal footing with a Norwegian travel guarantee. The Norwegian Travel Guarantee Fund can ask for documentation that the guarantee is adequate.
Example: An organiser sells package holidays and goes bankrupt before departure. Because the organiser has provided a travel guarantee, the Norwegian Travel Guarantee Fund can demand that the guarantee amount be paid out by the bank or insurance company. What travellers can have covered follows from § 43.
This section is the introduction to the chapter on travel guarantees. § 43 says what the guarantee must cover, and § 44 how large it must be. § 45 regulates how claims against the guarantee are made, and § 46 gives the Norwegian Travel Guarantee Fund the task of administering the scheme and checking that traders provide sufficient guarantees. The Ministry (departementet) can issue regulations (forskrifter) on the scheme under § 47. The rules on information requirements (§ 39) and the effect of breaching certain obligations (§ 40) refer to this section, as does § 51 on enforcement (håndheving).