Is a 24/7 emergency number required for tour operators?

Not by name. The EU Package Travel Directive never says "24/7" or "phone line". It says that a traveler in difficulty must be able to reach the organiser quickly and get appropriate assistance without undue delay. The 2026 revision goes further: from 29 March 2029, organisers must be "easily contactable" and able to "respond efficiently". In practice, that is hard to meet without always-on coverage.

This guide is for tour operators, travel agencies and other organisers selling packages to travelers in the EU. It quotes the law itself, Directive (EU) 2015/2302 and the amending Directive (EU) 2026/1024. It is a reading of the text, not legal advice: each Member State writes the rules into its own national law, so check yours.

Is a 24/7 emergency number legally required for tour operators?

No EU rule requires a 24/7 phone line. Article 7(2)(d) requires the package contract to give the traveler a local representative, a contact point or "another service which enables the traveller to contact the organiser quickly and communicate with him efficiently, to request assistance when the traveller is in difficulty". The channel and the hours are left to you.

The Directive's standard information form, which travelers receive before they book, sets the expectation in plainer words. The 2026 version says: "Travellers will be given an emergency telephone number or details of a contact point that they can use to get in touch with the organiser or the retailer while they are on their trip or holiday."

So the test is not "do you have a 24/7 number" but "can a traveler in difficulty reach you quickly, whenever that happens". A flight cancelled at 11pm, a transfer that never arrives at 6am, a hotel that has lost the booking on a Sunday: if nobody answers until Monday, "quickly" is hard to argue.

What does Article 16 require when a traveler is in difficulty?

Article 16 says the organiser "gives appropriate assistance without undue delay to the traveller in difficulty", including a traveler stranded abroad. That means information on health services, local authorities and consular assistance, help making "distance communications", and help "to find alternative travel arrangements". It may charge only a traveler who caused the difficulty intentionally or negligently, and no more than its actual costs.

Three points matter for operations teams:

• The duty is the organiser's. It applies "irrespective of whether those services are to be performed by the organiser or by other travel service providers" (Article 13(1)). The hotel, the DMC and the transfer company perform the services; the organiser answers for them.
• It includes events nobody caused. Article 16 expressly covers the situations in Article 13(7), where "unavoidable and extraordinary circumstances" stop a traveler getting home. There the organiser also bears the cost of necessary accommodation "for a period not exceeding three nights per traveller".
• The retailer is a valid door. A traveler can send messages, requests or complaints to the agency that sold the package; it "shall forward those messages, requests or complaints to the organiser without undue delay", and receipt by the retailer counts as receipt by the organiser (Article 15).

What does the 2026 revision of the Package Travel Directive change?

Directive (EU) 2026/1024, signed on 29 April 2026, adds an Article 16a. Its first paragraph turns the contact point into a service standard: the organiser "shall ensure that it is easily contactable" and "able to respond efficiently to queries from, or on behalf of, travellers", covering Article 16 assistance and problems "occurring during the performance of the package".

Its second paragraph covers every other kind of complaint: the organiser must acknowledge receipt "on a durable medium, within seven days" and give "a reasoned reply" within 60 days. Member States may set shorter periods.

Read the two paragraphs together. The 7-day and 60-day deadlines apply to complaints "other than those referred to in paragraph 1". A traveler stranded during the trip is in paragraph 1, where the standard is "easily contactable" and "respond efficiently", with no grace period. Much of the commentary so far presents Article 16a mainly as a complaint-management duty built around the 7- and 60-day deadlines. Writing for Garrigues in September 2026, José Manuel Cardona and Adrián Sánchez put the practical consequence plainly: it "will require customer service teams to implement the appropriate channels and tracking systems to ensure acknowledgment of receipt and compliance with these timeframes."

Not everyone thinks the revision goes far enough. Eric Drésin, Secretary General of ECTAA, which represents European travel agents and tour operators, said in its statement of 30 March 2026, when the Council adopted the text: "While the revised Directive brings a clearer and more proportionate framework, which is good news for both travel businesses and travellers, it does not go far enough in addressing the realities of crisis situations."

When do the new package travel rules apply?

Under Article 3 of Directive (EU) 2026/1024, Member States must adopt and publish their national rules by 29 September 2028 and apply them from 29 March 2029. Until then, the 2015 Directive as written into each country's law applies: Article 7's contact point and Article 16's assistance duty are already in force today.

The revision does not change who is covered for business travel. Packages bought "on the basis of a general agreement for the arrangement of business travel" between a trader and a business remain outside the Directive (Article 2(2)(c)).

Is the tour operator or the DMC responsible when something goes wrong abroad?

Under the Directive, the organiser is. A DMC, a bedbank or a local supplier performs part of the trip, but Article 13(1) makes the organiser responsible for every travel service in the package, whoever performs it. Article 16's assistance duty sits with the organiser too. Some Member States also make the retailer responsible.

That doesn't make the DMC unimportant. A good DMC is often the fastest help on the ground. But trips are rarely built from a single supplier anymore: a hotel from a bedbank, transfers from one DMC, a second destination from another, an activity booked direct. Each supplier sees its own booking, and none of them is accountable for the traveler's whole trip. The organiser is, whether or not anyone on its team is awake.

What are the options for covering traveler assistance around the clock?

There are five common ways to meet the Article 7 contact point and the Article 16 assistance duty outside office hours, the core of a tour operator's duty of care in the EU. Each covers part of the obligation; none of them moves the legal responsibility away from the organiser.

• An in-house on-call rota. Your team knows your products and policies best. The cost is people: a small team carrying a phone at night and on weekends, across time zones, and in the travelers' languages.
• The DMC or local representative. Strong for problems inside its own booking and destination. Weak when the problem sits with another supplier or spans several destinations, and service levels differ from one partner to the next.
• An after-hours agency service. Services such as agent24 give agencies a toll-free number and agents who can "create or modify air, car and hotel reservations". That covers reservations work; check what they handle beyond air, car and hotel.
• The traveler's insurance assistance line. Useful for medical emergencies and evacuations, under the traveler's own policy. It serves the policyholder, not your package, and not every traveler is insured.
• An outsourced assistance desk. A dedicated team that answers under your brand, coordinates every supplier in the trip and keeps a record of what happened. OnSpot's Assist is one; it helps an organiser carry out the Article 16 duty, but as its own FAQ says, it "doesn't transfer the legal responsibility itself", and it is not an emergency service.

Many organisers combine them: the DMC for the ground, insurance for medical emergencies, and one contact point that answers first and knows who to call next.

What should an organiser check before 2029?

Before national rules apply on 29 March 2029, an organiser should check five things: the contract's contact point, what happens out of hours, the record of each request, the path from retailers, and how other complaints are acknowledged within 7 days and answered within 60. Most can be checked against today's Articles 7, 15 and 16.

• The contract. Does every package contract name a contact point, with real contact details, as Article 7(2)(d) requires?
• The hours. What happens to a traveler's message at 2am on a Sunday, and how long until a person acts on it?
• The record. Can you show when a request arrived, who handled it and what was done? Article 16a's standard is "respond efficiently", and a record is how you prove it.
• The retailer path. If you sell through agencies, how quickly do their travelers' messages reach you? Article 15 counts their receipt as yours.
• The other complaints. Do you have a way to acknowledge every other complaint within seven days, on a durable medium, and answer it within 60, or sooner where national law says so?

If you want to talk through how 24/7 assistance under your own brand would work for your trips, talk to us.