Helping your agency with travel agent professional insurance
Travelling abroad remains as popular in the UK as ever, thanks the continuing availability of cheap flights from an expanding number of UK airports. Although the majority of trips do go smoothly and without hindrance, sometimes things go wrong. Passengers may find they have been given the wrong flight times, their baggage may be lost in transit, or a hotel may turn out to not be all it is cracked up to be. In some circumstances the customer will rightly or wrongly blame a travel agent, and occasionally this can lead to a legal claim. Thankfully, travel agent professional insurance could help protect a business if such a circumstance does arise.
Travel agent professional insurance which includes professional indemnity cover helps guard against the risk of being sued by an unhappy customer. A legal letter through the post is never a pleasant thing to receive and it can be an expensive proposition depending on how far a claim gets – hiring a legal team to defend a particularly complicated action is never a cheap proposition.
The right insurance policy will pay out any legal costs which are incurred as a result, regardless of whether the case gets no further than one hearing or whether it goes all the way to the high court. If the customer is ultimately awarded compensation, the insurer will normally pay this out as well.
Of course, as with other types of insurance, there will be limits as to how much protection someone will be entitled and as to how much the insurer will pay out by way of compensation. This is normally set at the start of the policy and the policyholder is free to choose what level and therefore what premium they have.
Accordingly, there is also the risk of being under-insured if someone goes for a more stripped down policy which is not suitable for their needs. If a travel agent which has a limited number of clients chooses £50,000 worth of cover for example, then faces a legal claim costing £100,000 pounds to defend, they will have to meet the £50,000 difference – therefore it is vital to choose the correct policy.
Common extras which are included with this type of insurance include protection should a legal case arrive because an employee has committed an act of dishonesty. Other legal pitfalls like defamation, breach of copyright and breach of confidence will also usually be covered.
If a travel agent decides to stop trading or to change insurer, most companies will be able to provide an overrun or retroactive period of travel agent professional insurance cover to make sure cover still applies should a legal claim arrive which relates to an event which happened in the past – ie a complaint is made one month, but the actual legal challenge does not arrive until five months later.
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