The industry may also have to brace itself in the coming decades for more litigation in areas such as medical tourism, so-called “workations” where people work while travelling, and even from the impact on holidays of climate change and extreme weather.

Abta’s annual Travel Law Seminar in London heard that the number of claims against travel firms for personal injuries suffered on holiday was increasing.

Claire Mulligan, a partner at Kennedys, told the seminar: “Tour operator liability is a new field of claims – we’re seeing many more trips and slips. We’re also seeing new law firms coming through to make claims for trips and slips.”

Mulligan added that claims management companies (CMCs) and lawyers, who previously focused on motoring claims, were now “coming into the tour operator liability world”.

“It’s the same trend as the sickness claims – now it’s bed bugs, trips and slips, that’s where the main cases are coming from,” said Mulligan.

Tour operators were hit by a tsunami of fake gastric travel sickness claims between 2016 and 2018, fuelled by CMCs encouraging holidaymakers to start legal action even if they had not been sick.

But the industry was able to fight back by successfully prosecuting some of their customers who made false sickness claims, while the government’s move in April 2018 to fix the legal costs in these sickness cases effectively derailed the business model of the CMCs, who had previously profited from high costs in bringing these claims.

Frederick Lyon, a barrister at Farrar’s Building, told the seminar that the government was due to extend the fixed recoverable costs regime for personal injury cases in October 2023, which will apply to claims below £100,000.

But he warned that this change was unlikely to have the same “significant effect” as on gastric illness cases due to the higher legal costs that will still be permitted in personal injury lawsuits.

“We’ve seen a drying up of those [gastric] claims generally across the industry but it might not be the same for personal injury claims,” added Lyon.

On a more positive note, the seminar heard that the industry has not yet been hit by a high number of Covid-related claims from consumers.

“Covid cases have not hit us in the same wave as we might have expected,” added Claire Mulligan.

The seminar also looked at where future legal cases may come from, with Asela Wijeyaratne, a barrister at 3 Hare Court, identifying the growing medical tourism market as a higher risk area.

“Medical tourism is likely to become far more commonplace in the next 25 years,” he said. “Globally it’s a very large market. There are different prices [for procedures] and they can be cheaper in other countries. Unfortunately, there are risks with medical tourism.”

Wijeyaratne said he expected to see “increasing litigation” in this area because of the risk of procedures going wrong and other complications, such as dealing with post-surgery issues after the customer has returned to their home country. He also said it could potentially lead to claims against travel companies under the Package Travel Regulations (PTRs).

He highlighted the FCDO’s decision last year to issue a warning to medical tourists going to Turkey for treatments following the deaths of 24 British nationals since January 2019. 

Wijeyaratne predicted that the FCDO was likely to issue more similar warnings to medical tourists in the coming years.

He also talked about the risks for travel companies organising workations – Tui was the first major operator to launch this type of product in 2021 – but there could be legal cases around health and safety, tax and social security, and internet/data.

Climate change and extreme weather could also lead to increased claims against travel companies when they affect holidays for their clients.