The Association of Travel Agencies of Serbia (UTAS) announced today that, “with their own inertia”, the state authorities of Serbia prevented travel agencies from operating legally.
The association requested that the authorities withdraw the regulations on the categorization of agencies and grant licenses and introduce individual insurance for each individual arrangement that agencies would issue on behalf of insurance companies.
“Such insurance should be without exemption clauses, such as this one for a state of emergency or a pandemic,” he said in a statement, requesting changes to the law.
UTAS believes that this can remain a permanent solution, “since all others are either to the detriment of passengers or to the detriment of agencies and a large number of employees in them.”
UTAS reminded that on October 1, all agencies with the status of “travel organizers” had expired guarantees, and thus travel licenses, because insurance companies decided not to continue issuing guarantees to travel organizers, believing that the risk was too great, and that a large number of agencies have not paid the installments for guarantees since March, so they remain indebted.
On the other hand, there are agencies, as stated by UTAS, which paid the entire amount needed to provide guarantees in January, but were not exempted from the decision of insurance companies.
They also reminded that the General Terms and Conditions of Insurance, which the agencies signed with insurance companies in January this year, state that guarantees will not be valid and that damages will not be paid to passengers if insolvency or poor agency service occurred “as a result of emergency”.
UTAS pointed out that the guarantees in fact ceased to be valid by the act of declaring a state of emergency, so that any insolvency or bankruptcy of agencies, insurance companies can be interpreted as having arisen as a consequence of the state of emergency.
They added that the situation was complicated by the decision of the Government of Serbia on certificates of replacement travel, because the document said that agencies are obliged to issue new guarantees, and that insurance companies were not previously asked to be exempted from that insurance condition.
UTAS says that it pointed out this illogicality on two occasions during April, addressing the National Bank of Serbia, the Ministry of Finance and the relevant ministry.
The epilogue is that passengers are not protected by insurance policies issued by insurance companies, and for all previous and future paid arrangements, it is uncertain whether passengers would be compensated in the event of insolvency or bankruptcy of the agency.
UTAS emphasized that the policies of insurance companies are not the only solution for providing guarantees to agencies and issuing licenses.
Theoretically, guarantees can also be issued by banks, which is prescribed in the Law on Tourism, however, in practice there is no legal possibility for that.
In addition, banks ask for coverage, either in a deposit on the account or in the value of the mortgage, at least three times the value of the guarantee amount.
Guarantees are prescribed in the amount of 200,000 to 400,000 euros, and 95% of agencies could not provide such guarantees.
The salvation of the agencies would be to extend the validity of their policies, bearing in mind that most agencies are not even close to the number of passengers on the basis of which they were assigned categorization, and thus prescribe the amount for which they must have guarantees.
By extending the validity of the policy, the agencies could formally and legally continue to sell the arrangements.
However, in practice, this would mean nothing as long as there is a clause in the General Terms and Conditions that the guarantee is not valid in the event of insolvency of the agencies as a result of the state of emergency, the statement said.
UTAS believes that the Ministry of Trade, Tourism and Telecommunications should have addressed the agencies with an adequate solution, instead of publishing a “scandalous announcement” on its website in the form of a recommendation to passengers to pay attention to which agency they are traveling with, alluding to there are agencies that still have licenses, but there are no such agencies on the market.
Immediately afterwards, the line minister announced in the media, but without an official decision or information on the ministry’s website, that he would not revoke the licenses of the agencies in the next seven to 10 days “until the situation is resolved.”
“Since there is no official decision on that, most agencies do not dare to sell the arrangements, fearing the punishment of the tourist inspection, while some agencies that do not have that fear continue to sell the arrangements, as if everything is in the best order,” UTAS said, Danas reports.
