A law taking effect today in the state of Maryland exposes why the travel industry’s professional standards should be higher.
Alieu and Isatu Wurie of Bowie, Maryland, died during their 2024 Hajj pilgrimage after purchasing an all-inclusive trip to Saudi Arabia.
USA Today reported that their family said promised transportation, credentials, and suitable accommodations failed to materialize during extreme heat, and their deaths ultimately helped propel legislation bearing their name.
Gov. Wes Moore signed the Don’t You Worry (Wurie) Act on May 26 this year. Effective today, the law creates a state framework for sellers of travel and requires providers serving Maryland residents to demonstrate at least $1 million in professional liability and errors-and-omissions coverage.
The significance for the industry couldn’t be clearer: raise professional standards to ensure safeguards for consumers, or face the consequences of regulation and compliance.
What troubles ASTA President and CEO Zane Kerby is that Maryland largely regulates financial protection rather than competency.
“Anyone can go and get an insurance policy and an IATA number and call themselves a travel advisor,” Kerby said in a video interview with Luxury Travel Advisor. “With minimal education requirements. We’re actually now trying to help fix this law.”
Insurance may protect against financial exposure after something goes wrong. However, it does not prove that an advisor understands legal obligations, knows where clients are during a crisis, or has relationships with DMCs, tour operators and other partners capable of responding.
That gap is the industry’s own making. Luxury travel agencies have spent much of the past 10-15 years moving upmarket to elevate the role of an agent into a professional advisor, and consumers appear to accept that promise.
Sixty percent of Gen Z and Millennial travelers say they want to use a travel advisor, according to a Chase Travel survey of more than 4,000 travelers. Forty-four percent said planning travel feels more overwhelming than it did previously, as disruptions, high-demand periods, and more complicated itineraries make human expertise and verification more valuable.
That creates an uncomfortable question for an industry with remarkably low barriers to entry: What should a client reasonably expect an advisor to know?
At Travel Pivots, an invitation-only industry workshop held in Phoenix in early July of 2026, a discussion about geopolitical risk and duty of care exposed the tension.
According to Brian King, CEO of the Modiv Group and the facilitator of the event’s discussion sessions, “no one wanted to talk about liability.”
There are many people and parties that touch a traveler’s itinerary during a trip, so who is ultimately responsible when something goes wrong?
It depends, of course, but for example if a client becomes stranded during a war, natural disaster, or other emergency, who is responsible for responding, and what happens when the advisor who sold the trip lacks the training or qualifications to help?
Readers might be thinking that’s what insurance is for.
“Sometimes,” Kerby said when asked whether an advisor’s business insurance would protect them from liability. “It depends.”
Kerby said advisors have faced lawsuits for circumstances far beyond their control, including a client who returned from Jamaica after being injured in a bar fight, then sued the advisor who arranged the trip.
“What do you owe a client?” Kerby said. “You have to disclose what you know. You have to expose what’s important or what’s generally available to the public.”
That supposedly includes getting into bar fights in foreign countries.
Nevertheless, advisors are still often blamed for risks they cannot reasonably control. The harder question is what happens when the problem is inadequate professional preparation.
“We do have a lot of people pouring into this industry ... who are unqualified,” Kerby said. “They need training.”
He argues that newer advisors also need mentorship they once had working alongside experienced agents to absorb important industry knowledge and become more effective.
Gunes Hopson sees the contradiction from both sides. She’s an attorney in Virginia, a travel advisor, and a member of the International Forum of Travel and Tourism Advocates, or IFTTA, an international organization of travel-law professionals whose stated objectives include encouraging common legal standards for the travel industry.
Hopson joined IFTTA after launching a law practice focused partly on legal risks facing travel advisors.
“We like to say we’re professionals,” Hopson said.
But travel advisors generally face nothing comparable to the individual licensing requirements governing lawyers, accountants, or real estate agents — professions that advisors commonly compare themselves to when justifying their value to potential clients on social media (or otherwise).
“Real estate is an especially useful comparison,” Hopson explained, “because agents are also commission-based.”
Lawyers must pass a bar examination and complete continuing education, but travel advisors face no equivalent nationwide competency requirement.
“Considering how high-risk the industry is, it’s actually quite surprising to me,” Hopson remarked.
Consequences on the Horizon
The scenario Kerby and Hopson worry about is no longer hypothetical.
“If we don’t have a standard for who is booking these trips...it’s a Pandora’s box,” Hopson said.
“When regulation arrives only after a disaster, lawmakers who are unfamiliar with the industry can create rules that do not solve the failure behind them. It kind of becomes chaos,” she added.
That puts education at the center of the liability debate.
Margaret Haas Wolf of Brownell argues that the industry needs a baseline standard below destination expertise and sales training.
Agencies promoting the idea that virtually anybody can become an advisor are “very risky,” she said in a video interview. At the same time, she mentioned how lowering barriers to entry has also brought valuable diversity into the profession, as well as positive attention to the role of a travel advisor to the general public.
The problem isn’t accessibility, but that there is no floor for anyone entering the industry.
“There’s no certification required. Nothing,” Haas Wolf said, noting that while programs exist, none of them are mandated by regulatory organizations. She believes baseline education should cover client care during emergencies, responsible handling of money, and cybersecurity before moving into product knowledge and selling.
ASTA and other agency programs already have pieces of such a system. While ASTA’s Verified Travel Advisor program is voluntary, it does include four courses covering legal obligations, ethics, and regulation.
Kerby said roughly 1,500 of ASTA’s 25,000 members hold the designation, with about a 60% first-attempt pass rate. He said ASTA has never received a complaint against a VTA during the program’s eight years and will be adding background checks to the certificate by the end of this year.
Kerby is not calling for national licensing or regulation, but he understands how quickly the political calculus can change.
“You’re one senator away” from legislation after the wrong person gets hurt or cheated, he emphasized.
The new law in Maryland suggests the industry may be closer than it thinks.
“There’s an inherent tension where, no, we don’t want to be regulated, but at the same time, we want to be taken seriously as professionals,” Hopson said. “Something’s got to give.”
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