Why travel agent professional indemnity cover can be important
With the world getting smaller thanks to technological advances and more travel routes, the role of a travel agent is getting wider and potentially more detailed. However, people have increasingly busy lives and may rely more heavily on agents to do more for them and to get things right. A mistake with some clients could lead to some people being delayed on their travels and potentially having knock on effects for their jobs and lives. Corporate clients in particular may feel aggrieved if a mistake by an agent means a group of their workers are back late from a trip. This means travel agent professional indemnity cover is something for any agent operating in the sector to consider, be it individually or as part of a firm.
Indemnity cover kicks in if you are ever formally accused of making a mistake, omission, or act of negligence in connection with your business. It generally applies if you are sued because of something the company has done or failed to do, which in some cases can lead to legal action. This typically happens when a client feels they have lost money due to something a travel agent has done, which could be connected to corporate trips or when a client perhaps suffers hardship in some other way because they have been delayed.
Travel agent professional indemnity cover will help pay your legal fees all the way through a case and will apply no matter how valid the claim against you is. So even if a complaint is completely unfounded, the insurance will still pay out because you’ll still need to defend your business. Crucially, indemnity cover also typically pays out compensation if it is awarded to a complainant too. Unsurprisingly there are limits on how much a policy will pay out and this is agreed when you take out the cover, but you can normally work out the level of protection you will need.
As with other kind of insurance you can even specify an excess on many types of indemnity cover. This is an initial fee you agree to pay towards expenses before cover kicks in full, similar in many ways to the kind of excess you would have on a car insurance policy. Other things you might want to check with insurers are whether or not public liability insurance will be included, as firms will sometimes throw this in too.
Your typical travel agent professional indemnity cover policy will also protect you against a wide range of outcomes. Beyond mistakes it also often guards against claims an agency’s employees have acted dishonestly and perhaps stolen from a client. It even protects you if you are accused of losing or damaging a client’s important data or documents, or of infringing confidence or copyright.
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