Home-Based Travel Agent - September 2007 - (Page 29)

books, tapes and videos for the protection of travel agents and tour operators. I sought to instill a concept in travel industry professionals, who for the most part were unfamiliar with the necessity of legally protecting their own assets. Many of the agents were so busy serving their customers as professionals that they did not worry about third party actions that could cause problems: being hauled into court as defendants to consumer lawsuits, because the traveler felt he or she had no one else to sue. The Fine Print Preventive Legal Care® is a concept used to create awareness in the travel agent and tour operator community of the concepts of travel protection, even before they have done anything wrong. The disclosure notices on my web site, www.travellaw.com/web/disclosures.html, are to protect you with retail sales and for more active tours, such as sporting and adventure trips. In the sporting/adventure tours disclosures, you will notice that these samples are partly in bold and all capital letters, and this style should be maintained for your documents to ensure that the consumer is alerted to the both the agents’ and tour operators’, as well as their own, legal rights. The bold font emphasizes the major issues. These notices provide you with certain legal concepts that you want a passenger to be aware of, such as assumption of risk and knowledge of a dangerous activity. If one person is purchasing the trip for others, you should make an attempt to get both the consumer-buyer/traveler to sign on behalf of themselves and others in their traveling group, so that all of the parties to the travel contract will be on notice. In today’s high-tech world, these travel contracts are usually entered into through phone or Internet transactions, rather than via the more traditional in-office signing of contracts. The retail travel agents must ensure that these consumer disclosure notices are sent to clients by being prominently displayed on the back of invoices or itineraries, so that if a situation did arise, and you are ordered to appear in court as a defendant to a lawsuit, you can at least tes- tify that in all of your transactions, this notice had been sent to the consumer. Since the consumer disclosure notice is prominently attached or printed on the documents that the consumer receives, it should be sufficient notice to the traveler and consumer of your capacity and responsibilities of being only an agent for the tour operator or carrier. Assigning Responsibility As a travel agent, you are a conduit: The transaction flows through you to the principal, the providers of travel, whom you serve as an agent. If the principal, meaning the carrier, the resort or the tour operator, is negligent, then your being this conduit means you are not the entity responsible. If you as an individual or company make an error in destination scheduling or book a flight on the wrong date or time, even though the passenger had the last clear chance of catching this error, the consumer/traveler may be able to go Continued on page 30 SEPTEMBER 2007 Home-BasedTravelAgent 29 http://www.travellaw.com/web/disclosures.html

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Home-Based Travel Agent - September 2007

Contents Editor's Note - Last-Minute Travel Publisher's Note - Communication is Key Your Lifeline Agent Spotlight Your Technology Industry News Hot Deals Home-Based Networking Preventing Legal Woes Destinations: Turkey Cover Story: Walking Ireland Destinations: Caribbean Destinations: Boston Cruises: Forecast Hotels Tours New Products

Home-Based Travel Agent - September 2007

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.