April 28, 2025

Travel Agent Contracts: How to Legally Protect Yourself

As a travel advisor, you love dreaming up vacations and crafting personalized experiences for your clients. But you also deal with some big risks, like when a client misses a flight, attempts to chargeback a payment, or blames you for disruptions to their trip that are outside your control. That’s why it’s so important to have a strong travel agent contract to protect you and your business.

At The Legal Paige, we offer business owners education and resources to get Legally Legit®! Our legal tips and attorney-drafted contract templates make it easy to protect yourself from legal ‘what-ifs’ so you can focus on doing what you love.

Our legal team has collaborated with experienced professionals in the travel advisor industry to understand the legal challenges you face every day as a travel advisor.

Whether you’re an independent travel advisor or part of a small travel agency, the contract clauses below can help you avoid disputes, successfully collect payments. This way, you can enjoy greater peace of mind before, during, and after your client’s trip.

Guarding Against Third-Party Vendor Issues in Your Travel Advisor Contract

Sometimes, you put in lots of time and research to create a perfect itinerary, but something falls through. Whether it’s a bus company that doesn’t show up, a resort that overbooks, or a hiking tour that gets canceled, you get stuck looking like the bad guy.

That’s why in our Travel Advisor Contract, we make it a point to include a “Scope of Services Clause.” This clause sets the expectation that you, the travel advisor, are the booking agent, not the provider of the service. You are not personally responsible for flights, accommodations, transportation, or other services.

We also address third-party vendors in a “Products & Suppliers Clause.” This part of your travel agent contract explains that you sell a variety of products from different suppliers. Again, you are an agent, not an owner or operator of the products or services you help them book. Your client should be aware that they are entering into separate contracts with each of those vendors or suppliers.

We also include a “Third-Party Liability Clause” to make it clear that you are not responsible for any personal injury, property damage, or other loss or inconvenience caused by a third party.

Your contract should make it clear that you are not liable to refund for services that your clients are unsatisfied with. It also states that you are not liable for damage or accidents that occur in vehicles, at hotels, or on excursions during their trip.

Laying out these provisions in your travel advisor agreement protects you if your client wants to blame or sue for third-party vendor issues outside your control.

Prohibiting Credit Card Authorization and Chargebacks in Your Travel Agent Contract

Something we hear from travel advisors time and time again is clients failing to make payments for bookings they agreed to. Have you ever had a client dispute a credit card charge for expenses related to a trip they already went on?

Successful payments for you and the companies you work with are crucial for any travel agency. Charge disputes could hurt you financially or jeopardize your relationship with suppliers.

Chargebacks can be a major problem when they violate a supplier’s terms and conditions. For example, let’s say you book a snorkeling excursion in Cancún for your client, but it gets cancelled due to weather. The snorkeling business clearly states that they will retain a fee, but allow your client to reschedule.

Your client chooses not to reschedule and instead tries to dispute the charge and get a refund for the fee. This puts the snorkeling company in a tight spot and reflects badly on you as the booking agent.

This is why a “Credit Card Authorization & Chargebacks Clause” is a must. This clause is included as part of our travel advisor contract to ensure that the client is completely responsible for the costs of their bookings. They agree to allow you to make supplier purchases on their behalf, and not file disputes with their bank or credit card company for reasons outside your or the supplier's control (except in cases of actual fraud).

This clause also states that if they do attempt a chargeback, you reserve the right to collect all additional costs, fees, and expenses associated with disputing that chargeback, including attorney fees.

Warning About the Risks of Airline Changes in Your Travel Advisor Contract

A pain point we see come up for travel advisors and travelers is the unpredictability of travel. You might book the ideal flight itinerary for your client, but it gets thrown off due to factors outside your control with airlines or airports. You may have experienced scenarios like:

- Your client decides to return home from Paris a day early for a family emergency.

- Your client’s flight from Maui to Oahu is repeatedly delayed, so they miss half a day of their Hawaiian travel plans.

- The airline loses your client’s baggage, and they are stuck without their belongings on a cruise.

In these situations, your clients may point fingers at you for their airfare trouble, even when the problem was out of your hands. We recommend including an “Airfare Clause” in your travel agent contract that states terms such as:

- If an airline cancels or delays, the Client should contact the airline directly to rebook. (This way, you’re not stuck as the middleman at 1 am.)

- The client should confirm all bookings with their airline before the departure date. (So they aren’t caught off guard about last-minute changes to departure times.)

- The client is responsible for arriving on time before a flight, so they don’t risk missing the flight even if they’re held up in security or for other reasons.

- You will not reimburse the client for unexpected additional travel costs or missed flights, including missed trips or delays. (After all, you are the planner, not the pilot.)

It’s important to make it VERY clear in your travel agent contract that you are not liable for damages related to airline travel.

Personal Information and Privacy

One more risk I’ll mention relates to clients’ personal information. Below are some important steps to take in your travel agent contract.

Ask your client to agree that the personal information they share with you is complete, current, and accurate.

As you know, it’s extremely important for names to match up, or clients might get stuck at check-in for their flight or other booking.

In the “Booking Accuracy & Legal Names” Clause of a travel agent contract, you can ask clients to review their booking confirmation right away and verify that their personal information is correct. Booking clients with the wrong name or a misspelled name can create a huge headache for you and them so having this clause in your contract is a must!

This clause can require clients to immediately contact you if any information is incorrect or missing. It may state that if they fail to notify you of corrections, they will be responsible for related risks or costs.

State that you are not responsible for how any third parties may handle the clients’ personal and private information.

To book flights, hotels, cruises, rental cars, and other services for your clients, you need to collect and share their personal information. This may include their names, birth dates, passport details, mailing address, payment information, and more.

Once you pass along client information to suppliers such as hotels, airlines, cruise lines, or tour companies, you can’t control how they store or protect that data.

We include a “Authorization to Use, and Warranty of, Personal Information Clause” to release you from liability for these risks.

The Legal Paige Take

Planning dream vacations for clients is incredibly rewarding, but it comes with a variety of risks. A carefully drafted travel agent contract can help you set expectations about your role as the travel agent and help your client enjoy the best trip possible.

We’ve briefly covered travel agent terms and conditions related to:

- Third-party suppliers and vendors
- Credit card chargebacks
- Airline risks
- Sharing of personal information

However, there are many more important provisions to outline in your Travel Agent Contract, such as assumption of risk and traveling with minors.

For a more comprehensive list of clauses we generally recommend, check out The Legal Paige Travel Advisor Contract template.

Pro tip: Remember that communication is always key. Clients usually don’t read contracts as carefully as we hope, so it’s important to reinforce important elements of your agreement in communications outside of your contract, such as in onboarding calls or emails.

If you’re looking for travel agent terms and conditions or a sample contract between a travel agency and a client, we have just the thing for you! My team and I have used our legal knowledge along with insights from experienced travel advisors to craft a ready-to-customize contract template for travel advisors.

This tool makes it easy to implement all of the provisions mentioned above—and more!

THIS BLOG POST IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR LEGAL ADVICE. EVERY SITUATION IS DIFFERENT & IS FACT-SPECIFIC. A proper legal analysis is necessary based on your location and contract. Consult an attorney in your home state for advice regarding your contract or specific legal situation.

SEE OUR FULL DISCLAIMER HERE.