Lawyer warns against disobeying FCO advice

Farina Azam, partner and travel lead, Kemp Little, said an FCO advisory for a destination “doesn’t make it illegal to travel” but would invalidate a customer’s travel insurance and may impact an operator’s own liability cover.

“I’ve had clients with customers who are adamant they want to travel to a destination even though there’s an FCO advisory in place ask what they can do about it,” she told TTG’s latest Business Support Live.

“Ultimately you can’t ask customers to contract out of their legal rights under the PTRs, you can’t exclude your own liability for any death or injury that happens over there if it’s due to your negligence.

“So you are ultimately sending clients on holiday and there’s a risk you could receive claims against you that you’re not insured for. Even if they have signed something [pre-travel] you can’t get customers to sign up to something if it’s not legal.

“Generally it is quite risky to send customer to a destination against an FCO advisory and I would generally advise against it, but if you do want to do it, then you need to check that your own tour operator’s liability insurance does cover you for that travel and they [the customers] get a travel insurance policy that would cover them.”

Azam also discussed the use of ’disclaimers’ to protect operators from liability, if clients were to travel against FCO warnings or to prevent backlash should a customer be unsatisfied with the holiday they received.