Claims against travel agents cluster into a handful of shapes. None of them involve the dramatic scenario agents picture when they think about being sued.
1. The wrong date, name, or airport
The most common claim in the business is a data-entry error that nobody catches until the airport.
A return flight booked for the wrong month. A hotel reserved for the same dates next year. A passenger listed as "Kate Miller" when the passport says "Katherine Miller." Two airports serving one city, and the transfer booked from the other one.
Airlines charge to fix name errors after ticketing, and change fees on international itineraries run into four figures. When the error is yours, the client expects you to absorb it, and errors and omissions coverage is what responds — including the defense if they go further than expecting.
2. The supplier that fails
A tour operator stops answering. A small cruise line cancels a season. A villa rental company goes quiet with a deposit.
The client's money is gone, and the claim against you is rarely that you caused it. It is that you recommended a supplier you should have vetted, or that you never mentioned travel insurance would have covered supplier insolvency, or that you knew the operator was in trouble.
That third one is why documenting what you offered matters. An email showing you presented coverage, priced it, and were declined turns an argument into a closed file.
3. What the client says you told them
Construction at the resort. A beach closed for the season. A visa the client needed and did not have. A rainy season that was not mentioned.
Failure-to-disclose claims turn on what was said, and memory does not favor the agent six months later. The defense is a written record — the itinerary email, the confirmation, the note in the file — showing the detail was communicated.
Agents who put trip conditions in writing at booking rather than describing them on a call have a much shorter conversation when this happens.
4. The travel insurance deadline
Pre-existing condition waivers usually have to be purchased within a set window of the initial trip deposit, often fourteen to twenty-one days. Cancel-for-any-reason upgrades work the same way.
A client's father gets sick, they cancel, and the claim is denied because the condition existed before purchase and no waiver applied. What follows is a call to you, asking why nobody explained the deadline.
This claim is preventable in one step: quote coverage at the same time you quote the trip, and note the date you did it. Agents appointed to sell travel insurance directly tend to have this conversation earlier, because the product is in front of them rather than being a referral.
5. The chargeback
The client disputes the charge with their card issuer rather than calling you. If you took payment as merchant of record, the money leaves your account while the dispute is decided, and you may be defending a booking you already paid the supplier for.
This one is not usually an E&O claim at all. It is a business practice problem, and the fix is upstream: pay suppliers directly where you can, keep signed authorization for what you charge, and hold the confirmations.
What this pattern says about limits
Four of these five start with a fee, a deposit, or one trip. They end up costing more than the trip because someone had to answer a demand letter.
That is the argument for buying coverage on the basis of defense cost rather than trip value. A $1 million per-claim limit is not a prediction that a client will sue you for a million dollars. It is what keeps the bill for being right from landing on you.