No. A travel agency is not an entity engaged in the business of transporting either passengers or goods. Its covenant with its customers is simply to make travel arrangements in their behalf. Its services include procuring tickets and facilitating travel permits or visas as well as booking customers for tours.
Held: By definition, a contract of carriage or transportation is one whereby a certain person or association of persons obligate themselves to transport persons, things, or news from one place to another for a fixed price. Such person or association of persons are regarded as carriers and are classified as private or special carriers and common or public carriers. A common carrier is defined under Article 1732 of the Civil Code as persons, corporations, firms or associations engaged in the business of carrying or transporting passengers or goods or both, by land, water or air, for compensation, offering their services to the public.
It is obvious from the above definition that respondent is not an entity engaged in the business of transporting either passengers or goods and is therefore, neither a private nor a common carrier. Respondent did not undertake to transport petitioner from one place to another since its covenant with its customers is simply to make travel arrangements in their behalf. Respondent’s services as a travel agency include procuring tickets and facilitating travel permits or visas as well as booking customers for tours.
While petitioner concededly bought her plane ticket through the efforts of respondent company, this does not mean that the latter ipso facto is a common carrier. At most, respondent acted merely as an agent of the airline, with whom petitioner ultimately contracted for her carriage to Europe. Respondent’s obligation to petitioner in this regard was simply to see to it that petitioner was properly booked with the airline for the appointed date and time. Her transport to the place of destination, meanwhile, pertained directly to the airline.
The object of petitioner’s contractual relation with respondent is the latter’s service of arranging and facilitating petitioner’s booking, ticketing and accommodation in the package tour. In contrast, the object of a contract of carriage is the transportation of passengers or goods. It is in this sense that the contract between the parties in this case was an ordinary one for services and not one of carriage. Petitioner’s submission is premised on a wrong assumption.
The nature of the contractual relation between petitioner and respondent is determinative of the degree of care required in the performance of the latter’s obligation under the contract. For reasons of public policy, a common carrier in a contract of carriage is bound by law to carry passengers as far as human care and foresight can provide using the utmost diligence of very cautious persons and with due regard for all the circumstances. As earlier stated, however, respondent is not a common carrier but a travel agency. It is thus not bound under the law to observe extraordinary diligence in the performance of its obligation, as petitioner claims. [Crisostomo vs. CA, G.R. No. 138334, August 25, 2003]
