The court concluded that Article 6.748(2) of the Civil Code (implementing Article 4(1)(a) of Directive 90/314/EEC) shall be interpreted as providing a non-exhaustive list of information to be provided before the conclusion of contract for the provision of tourist services. The mandatory information requirements must be evaluated depending on the factual circumstances, having in mind the experience of the tourist, his preferences and other individual factors. Such information cannot be understood as comprising only the information explicitly set out in national laws.
In the case at hand, the information provided by the defendant in the promotional catalogues and websites did not meet the standards of sufficiency and comprehensibility to the average consumer and the plaintiffs were not informed about passport requirements in the contract. Therefore, the plaintiffs had the right to claim damages due to defendant’s failure to furnish the plaintiffs with essential information about the tourist journey.
With regard to the possibility to claim non-pecuniary damages even if the actual journey had not started, the court concluded that Article 6.754 of the Civil Code (implementing Article 5(1)-(2) of Directive 90/314/EEC) does not link the possibility to claim non-pecuniary damages to the specific stage of the journey. Therefore, there is no restriction to claim non-pecuniary damages which arose due to defendant’s failure to provide information before the journey, even though the tourist did not start or could not have started the journey.