Adventure travel is a business built on trust, friendship, and a shared love of the field. But as two veteran travel lawyers reminded the ATTA community in a recent podcast conversation, it is a great industry "until it isn't." When something goes wrong on a trip, or a partnership sours, the operators who fare best are the ones who prepared long before the crisis arrived.
This article is based on the first 2026 episode of the Travel Trends podcast's quarterly Adventure Travel podcast series with the Adventure Travel Trade Association (ATTA), hosted by Dan Christian and ATTA CEO Shannon Stowell. This episode, candidly titled "When Bad Sh*t Happens to Good People on Holiday," brought together two specialist travel attorneys: Jeff Ment of the Ment Law Group, and Chun T. Wright of the Law Office of Chun T. Wright, who owns a boutique law firm and sits on the ATTA governing board. The goal, Stowell said, was not an exhaustive legal course but a practical introduction to the issues operators most often overlook.
The Gaps Operators Miss Most
Both lawyers agreed that the biggest vulnerability is simply under-investing in legal protection. A tour operator, Jeff Ment explained, sits squarely between customers on one side and vendors and suppliers on the other, and needs to be contractually protected in both directions. "You've got to look to your left and look to your right and understand the legal implications of those people that are your friends today and maybe your opposing party tomorrow," he said.
Chun Wright sees the same pattern across the businesses she advises. Operators pour money into marketing to win customers but neglect "protecting the house, putting in the locks." Her recommendation is to treat legal as a planned, ongoing line item. "Build in a legal budget. You're going to have legal needs, you're going to have questions," she said, noting that even a modest, scalable budget and an ongoing relationship with a lawyer pay off when "things hit the fan."
Duty of Care and Vendor Vetting
Much of an operator's exposure comes down to duty of care, the legal obligation to look after someone in your care, custody, and control. For a tour operator, Jeff said, that duty most often shows up in vendor vetting. Operators are "amalgamators" who assemble components, the motor coach, the museum, the restaurant, the adventure activity, and the duty of care requires selecting those partners in a commercially reasonable way. What a reasonable operator would do varies from Namibia to Antarctica, which is why understanding the local context matters.
Chun added that the picture grows more complex when an operator works through a destination management company that in turn hires suppliers. "We have to take a surgical look at the duty," she said, because responsibility can differ depending on where a party sits in that chain.
Prevention, Proactive Planning, and Crisis Response
Jeff framed legal work in three buckets. The first is preventative: booking terms and conditions, waivers, insurance, and proper company formation. The second is proactive, fortifying the business itself as an asset by protecting intellectual property and registering trademarks. "You have a business, let's treat it as a business," he said. The third is crisis response, the late-night phone call when a traveler is seriously injured or dies. Both his firm and Chun's handle this work: incident response, evidence collection, language barriers, the trauma carried by guides and staff, and the often invasive demands of US litigation, sometimes acting as the de facto fact-gatherer on the ground.
Jeff cautioned that the contractual details operators skip are exactly the ones that matter. Most clients want to talk about dates, price, deposits, and refunds, while the lawyers are focused on indemnification and force majeure. "Not all are the same," he warned. "Just because you say the words, it doesn't mean you're gonna get what you think unless you've planned for it."
Why AI Is Not a Substitute for Counsel
Asked about operators leaning on ChatGPT in place of a lawyer, both attorneys pushed back firmly. AI tools do not understand a specific business situation, Chun said, and anything entered into them may become public, potentially breaking attorney-client privilege. She pointed to a New York case in which material a user fed into ChatGPT was deemed not privileged and had to be turned over. In practice, she added, AI-generated documents tend to create more work, not less, because counsel has to unpack why they do not fit. The better first stops, both agreed, are trusted resources: trade associations like ATTA, which offer templates and resources, and an insurance broker or trusted advisor who can point you to specialists.
Your Network, and Experts in Your Corner
Stowell recalled futurist Thornton May's line that "your network will keep you safe," and described an operator who once posted in the ATTA member HUB: "I had a fatality on a trip and I have no idea what to do." An experienced operator immediately sent over a checklist of everything to consider. The network is invaluable, Stowell said, but it is not a replacement for having legal representation already in your corner when you step into the ring.
When the lawyers rate the adventure industry's crisis and risk-management readiness on a scale of zero to five, the numbers are sobering. "One to three" when clients first come to them, Chun said. A risk management plan can cost almost nothing or thousands of dollars, Jeff noted, but at minimum every operator should have a phone tree, with the lawyer called right at the beginning when there’s an incident. Adventure travel carries risk that can be reduced but never removed. That reality should be presented to customers honestly, not downplayed.
Terms, Conditions, and the Insurance Question Nobody Asks
For a small or mid-sized business without in-house counsel, Jeff said the single highest-value investment is a solid set of terms and conditions that are properly executed and genuinely communicated. Courts look closely at "conspicuousness," whether customers actually saw and agreed to the terms through a signature, a click-agree, or an audit trail rather than text buried in a website. Alongside contracts, he listed correct insurance and proper business formation as the three pillars of protection.
On insurance, he flagged the question operators forget to ask. "The most important question about insurance is the one that people never ask: What are the exclusions and what's not covered?" Many activities operators assume are covered, he warned, sit in the fine print. As for how often to review it all, his rule of thumb is simple: when you go to the dentist each year, call your lawyer too. Stowell noted ATTA runs its own legal review on roughly a one-to-two-year rotation.
Planning Your Exit, From Day One
Succession planning, Jeff said, begins the day you open your business, and it is not only about selling. It also covers what happens if an owner suddenly has a major health challenge. Operators looking toward an acquisition or investment need their affairs in order: clean electronic records, a real understanding of profitability and EBITDA, protected intellectual property and trademarks, and an awareness of valuable assets like grandfathered national park permits. Private equity, he cautioned, loves profitability more than it loves travel, and family succession is "great until it isn't." Above all, he urged owners to define their intention, whether that is profit, preserving the brand, or passing the business to employees.
Dan, who works regularly with acquirers, observed that operators often overvalue their business. While a seller may dream of ten times EBITDA, tour operator valuations more realistically land around five to seven times, with brand strength and permits influencing the figure.
When the Worst Case Arrives
Jeff closed with a story that underscored why this preparation matters. Days earlier, he had taken a frantic call about an accident in Nicaragua: one person dead and a 13-year-old's arm amputated. He had family-care specialists on the ground the next morning and an automotive engineer en route to inspect the vehicle. "Nobody likes this kind of talk," he said. "It's sad, but bad things happen to good people on vacation. You gotta be ready for it."
The takeaways the hosts drew were clear: the best legal protection is proactive rather than reactive, contracts matter even in informal partnerships, and no operator should be searching for help in the middle of a crisis. As Shannon put it, "You don't want to be looking on Google or looking in a phone book when you are in a crisis. So build those relationships early."
Jeff Ment can be reached at The Ment Law Group ([email protected]). Chun Wright can be reached at the Law Office of Chun T. Wright ([email protected]). The episode is part of the Travel Trends podcast series with ATTA, available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.
The next Adventure Travel podcast series will be published this summer, so make sure you are subscribed on your preferred streaming platform (Apple, Spotify, YouTube) to be notified when the next episode goes live. Also, Dan will be recording an Event Spotlight at our ATWS in Quebec City this September 14-17, 2026. If you’d like to be featured, reach out to them in advance to schedule time to record.