An illness that occurs before departure may give the right to a full refund of the trip purchased, without the application of penalties and even in the absence of specific cancellation insurance. The Court of Cassation established this with a ruling destined to establish jurisprudence and have important repercussions on the tourism sector.
The story concerns a couple who had purchased a holiday package in London from a tour operator. Due to a health problem that arose before departure, the two travelers were forced to renounce their stay and requested a refund of the sums paid.
At first instance the court accepted their request, recognizing the right to full reimbursement of the amount paid. However, the decision was overturned on appeal, where the judges considered the ordinary discipline of withdrawal from the contract to be applicable: according to this interpretation, the renunciation of the trip was attributable to personal and subjective reasons, such as not to exempt customers from paying the foreseen cancellation costs.
The overturning of the Supreme Court
The Court of Cassation instead adopted a different perspective, placing the very nature of the organized travel contract and its purpose at the center.
According to the judges of legitimacy, the tourist package cannot be considered as a simple sum of services – transport, accommodation, excursions or recreational activities – but as a complex service aimed at guaranteeing the consumer an experience of leisure and relaxation.
The Supreme Court of Cassation in ordinance no. 17136/2026 established that in the tourist package contract the subsequent impossibility of using the service, not attributable to the traveler and such as to frustrate the tourist purpose, constitutes an independent cause for the termination of the contract due to the impossibility of realizing the concrete cause, with the right to a full refund of the price. Neither the insurance policy stipulated nor the withdrawal regulations pursuant to art. 41 cod. tourism can, in themselves, exclude this remedy.
The ruling underlines that all the elements organized by the tour operator are functional to achieving the so-called “tourist purpose” or “pleasure purpose” pursued by the traveler through the stipulation of the contract. If an illness makes it impossible to take advantage of the holiday, the essential objective of the agreement is lost.
For this reason, the Court clarified that the impossibility of providing the service does not only concern the case in which the supplier is no longer able to provide the service, but also the hypothesis in which the customer, for reasons beyond his control, can no longer use the purchased service.
Insurance irrelevant for the purposes of the right to reimbursement
Another significant passage of the decision concerns the role of insurance policies. The Court of Cassation clarified that the existence or otherwise of coverage against trip cancellation does not affect the right to reimbursement deriving from the impossibility.
Insurance, in fact, operates on a different level, that of risk coverage and relationships between the insured and the insurance company. It cannot therefore be considered a necessary condition for obtaining the refund of the sums when the holiday becomes objectively unusable due to illness.
A ruling that strengthens consumer protection
The ruling represents an important precedent in favor of travellers. The principle affirmed by the Court of Cassation recognizes that the purpose of pleasure constitutes an essential element of the tourism contract and that, when this fails due to unforeseeable causes not attributable to the consumer, the penalties provided for voluntary withdrawal cannot be automatically applied.
A decision that could influence future disputes between customers and tour operators, strengthening the protection of those who find themselves forced to give up a holiday for health reasons.
