The Verkehrsbüro subsidiary Ruefa Reisen suffered a legal defeat in the Supreme Court. A clause that was supposed to exclude the right of withdrawal in the event of “future corona-related travel restrictions” was overturned by the Austrian highest court.

A clause used by the tour operator in 2021 gave travelers the option of canceling free of charge in the event of future corona-related travel restrictions. The Supreme Court (OGH) upheld the complaint of the VKI and judged the clause to be illegal. The judgment is final.

The fact that the Verkehrsbüro group member came up with the clause that has now been overturned should not be purely coincidental. Over a longer period of time, Austria has inflationarily covered numerous countries with travel warnings and practiced bureaucratic and complicated entry regulations itself. There was and is no legal right to cancel or rebook package tours free of charge in the event of an official travel warning. So far, however, this has been common practice. However, the hardly understandable and inflationary travel warnings issued by the federal government have led to many tour operators only canceling or rebooking free of charge if a fee-based flex package has been purchased beforehand.

The proceedings before the ECJ dealt with this passage, which was found in the Ruefa Reisen terms and conditions: "Cancellations due to future 'corona-related' travel restrictions no longer lead to a free right of withdrawal for the traveler, since everyone can now see the effects must be aware of the restrictions on freedom of travel caused by COVID-19. The right of withdrawal only applies in the case of unavoidable and extraordinary circumstances that were not known at the time the contract was concluded. If such circumstances were already known at the time of booking and have not worsened significantly as a result, a free cancellation of the trip cannot be granted.

According to the Supreme Court, this clause contradicts the law for several reasons. According to the clause, "cancellations due to future 'corona-related' travel restrictions" no longer lead to a free right of withdrawal for travelers. Ruefa argued that unforeseeable restrictions for "corona-related" reasons were no longer conceivable because the global occurrence of the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen was known. According to the Supreme Court, this is not to be followed. The assumption that further restrictions - which have not yet taken place - are no longer conceivable is based on mere speculation. The OGH therefore judged this part of the clause to be non-transparent. Ruefa thus reserves an unreasonably wide scope for interpretation.

According to the Package Travel Act (PRG), travelers can withdraw from the package tour free of charge before the start of the package tour if unavoidable and extraordinary circumstances occur at the destination or in its immediate vicinity that significantly affect the implementation of the package tour or the transport of people to the destination. The clause at issue does not match the text of the PRG. The “unavoidable and extraordinary circumstances” are not further defined.

"Ruefa already used this clause in spring 2021, when travel restrictions related to corona were still in place. Due to the volatile situation, the extent and geographic scope of travel restrictions was not necessarily foreseeable. For this reason alone, it could not be justified to comprehensively deprive consumers of the right to free travel cancellation in the event of corona-related travel restrictions," comments Beate Gelbmann, head of the complaints department at the VKI, on the procedure.