21 Apr
2021

Managing your business risks in the current climate

Author: Simon Bunce, Director of Legal Affairs, ABTA

The theme of this year’s conference is risk. The risks your business faces by the very nature of the industry that we are in, the risks that all businesses face in an increasingly complicated world, and the risks that your customers might now perceive in buying travel services and travelling around the globe.

Travel has always been a complicated business. Moving people safely around the world by coordinating multiple suppliers in different jurisdictions is not easy.

At the conference we want to explore how you can protect your business through identifying and managing the risks that can arise, and that includes helping your customers understand and manage their own risks. 

This is particularly important at a time when public perception of the risks of travel is so heightened.

So, we will look at risk through the management of your customer advertising, sales and support processes. More than ever, transparency and clarity are essential so that your customers understand what it is that you are offering and that they are buying and who might be responsible if things change in the UK or at the destination so that the holiday that they bought is not the same as the holiday that they get, or even, if they don’t get the holiday at all.

Managing those sales and support process should avoid your customers being surprised by developments and should allow them to understand whether they have any recourse if they are unhappy and, if so, against whom. Is that you? Their travel insurer? Or, indeed, no one? It cannot be assumed that there is always someone at fault who should pay when things go wrong.

We will look at risk through the management of your contractual relationships, including in a post-Brexit environment. One of the difficulties faced by many travel businesses this time last year was to understand how their existing contracts dealt with a situation that none had anticipated and which, in many cases, left the business chasing monies that had already been paid over to suppliers who were, themselves, facing significant financial challenges. Concepts such as force majeure and contractual frustration came to the fore this year as never before. But they did not always provide the answer that people wanted.

And we’ll look at the wider risks that all businesses face but very much from a travel industry perspective. That will include the changed working environment resulting from enforced homeworking. It will also consider how leaving the EU has changed the way that the transfer of data across borders needs to be managed and has changed our relationship with the European law that has been so central to the devolvement of the travel industry over the past 30 years.

If there is one thing that this past year has taught us, it is that, even when the most extraordinary things happen, you can not ignore the law. Understanding what that means for your business is more important than ever.

Register your place at the Travel Law Seminar now

The Travel Law Seminar, now in its 23rd year, will be brought to you virtually on 19 May via a custom virtual event platform. 

To register your place and view the full event agenda please visit abta.com/abtaevents

Make the most of our new business rate that allow you to train your whole team for less. It includes five digital log ins and on demand content can be shared amongst your team. 

Additional early bird discounts are available until 7 May. All discounts will be applied automatically.