Content area
Full Text
Today, travel purchases come in many forms. The travel agent is at the center of these transitions.
There are five main groups that travel and tourism law is concerned with: providers, sellers, travelers, regulators, and hosts. Travel agents fall under the category of sellers of travel, a group that also includes tour operators, consolidators, wholesalers, telemarketers, travel clubs, informal travel promoters, pseudo-travel agents, Internet websites, and companies offering unsolicited e-mail postings. Sellers of travel may be assisted by escrow banks, surety, and insurance companies.
Who makes up the other four groups? Providers of travel include airlines, cruise lines, railroads, bus and rental car companies, tour operators, hotels, and resorts and resort time-share operators. Travelers are the consumers who purchase air tickets, hotel reservations, etc., but are also the people who travel on tickets purchased by others such as their family or employer. Travelers also may be domestic, national, or international. Regulators are the state and national governments, as well as international law, custom, and practice. Hosts are the locals who receive the travelers.
The terms traveler, tourist, and consumer are often used interchangeably, but they are, in fact, distinct. Traveler is the person taking the trip, which can be for business or pleasure; tourist is a leisure traveler for recreation whose trip is not wholly paid for by his or her employer for business purposes; consumer is the purchaser of travel and may not be the person taking the trip -the purchaser may be a parent or employer. ("Fam trips" or familiarization tours, on which a seller of travel becomes familiar with consumer tourist products and destinations, are normally paid for by the employer.) Another distinction can be made between travel law and tourism law: Travel law considers consumer issues, while tourism law is based on the viewpoint of suppliers of travel.
To understand the role of travel agents, one must understand the contract-law relationship between agent and principal. An agent is a person or company authorized to act on authority of and on behalf of the principal. The agent remains under the control of the principal in dealing with third parties, and all the authorized acts of the agent are imputed back to the principal as if they were done by the principal and...