Originally Posted by
CPH-Flyer
There should be better consumer protection. But once you start building that the screams of "government overreach" will appear, even from a lot of consumers. It is going to be a country by country thing, probably not even based on the consumer's location but the location of the invoicing entity.
While the EU introduced a lot of delay and cancellation protection, if the airline goes out of business you are basically left with credit card dispute and travel insurance to cover your losses. EU261 requires the airline to pay, but if they are insolvent the passengers is just another unsecured claim in the bankruptcy.
There are some countries that has collateral coverage for package tours, but even that is quite limited.
The simple thing we are reminded of, in a multi national travel industry it is just very complex to understand what protections we have as part of the transaction. But mostly none.
At the very least, I feel there should be some disclosure when booking through a franchise like Marriott where, if they don't want to accept any responsibility to fulfill the request, that "Your purchase and agreement will be directly with the hotel which is owned by [hotel ownership company], Marriott does not accept any responsibility for fulfilling the stay or providing a refund if [hotel ownership company] does not". Sounds a bit harsh, but so far that is what we are seeing play out and I'd bet the vast majority of consumers don't realize that hotel brands like Marriott or Hilton is not the company providing the stay despite the name being plastered all over the building.
It might lead to companies like Marriott restructuring hotel payments so that the hotel doesn't get (fully) paid until the stay is fulfilled so they don't have to put that disclaimer there, especially because OTAs like Booking and Expedia generally do that already on their Pay Now rates.