An EU regulation requires travel service providers to provide their customers with certain relevant information and a ‘standard information form’ summarising the consumers’ most important rights prior to booking. This project analyses the content and the design of this standard information form as well as its positioning in the booking process from a behavioural economics perspective. To achieve this goal, we first present insights from the behavioural economics literature on the perception and processing of information to gather insights regarding the optimal presentation of information. We then analyse how the EU directive is currently implemented by travel service providers. This includes conducting a case study using examples from the booking process of 20 travel service providers active in German-speaking countries. This analysis allows us to identify room for improvement which can be addressed. In the last step, which is informed by the previous analysis, we suggest specific measures derived from the behavioural economics literature to improve the design and positioning of the standard information form in the booking process in order to improve consumer understanding and hence welfare.
Link to report
Link to policy brief