When thinking about obtaining liability insurance, it is important to consider all aspects of your work as a guide. The insurance offered by the Association of Philadelphia Tour Guides (APT) through the National Federation of Tourist Guide Associations (NFTGA) is sufficient to obtain a Commercial Use Authorization (CUA) with Independence National Historical Park (INHP). Depending on your guide activities however, it may or may not be good enough to cover you if something were to happen on tour. Read the FAQs and Summary of Charges of this liability insurance carefully. Assess your risks and potential income to make the best decision for you and your company.
If you do any tours as an independent contractor (IC) or employee for a bigger company, the NFTGA insurance offered through APT gives you extra coverage. You would be covered by the bigger company’s insurance but in case a group tried to sue you too as well, you would be covered. And supposedly – there has never been a claim on it in 10 years so we aren’t exactly sure – it would cover you if you are booked directly to ‘just’ do a tour and don’t put out any of your own money for vendors that they would reimburse you for later.
If you don’t do many direct booking tours and don’t do any vendor services, you’d probably be okay with the NFTGA insurance. If you talk to the guests a lot to advise them on what to do and see beforehand, some could say that puts you into tour director land, in which case NEXT insurance might be a better option. (In a 2026 poll of corporate 1-person tour company members, the yearly fee for NEXT ranged from $350-$550). You have to look at how many tours you do with how many people and weigh your risks. It seems that the only negative with NEXT is that you can’t hire a subcontractor with it, so you would not be able to hire another guide to help you with a big group. (At least not hire them and have them covered by insurance). Some APT guides have insurance through aon.com which is very comprehensive but is around $900-$1200/year. The Trip School has this article with some options as well.
If you are thinking of using your car for guiding, it is recommended to get covered under your auto insurance policy. Essentially you would need to get the same coverage as Uber/ Lyft drivers if you were going to use your car for touring purposes.
APT researched this heavily in 2022-2023. The market is always changing! If you have insurance with or come across an insurance company that works well for your tour guide needs, please share with president@phillyguides.org. In 2022, APT had a Zoom session on the CUA and insurance options that might be helpful for your understanding.
The following is correspondence between APT and the NFTGA insurance coordinator in December 2022. It addresses the murky area of insurance for 1-person tour companies.
APT Question: As INHP has begun requiring CUAs from guides in Philadelphia who lead tours in the park (most of us) for the past few years – and have been stricter about it post-covid – getting insurance has been crucial for a lot of us who maybe didn’t worry about it too much before. The park service does accept the NFTGA insurance for the CUA, the question is whether the policy really covers the 20-30 of us who are one person tour companies.
It’s clear that the policy offers additional coverage to IC tour guides working for larger companies. What isn’t clear is whether one person tour companies who are somewhere between ICs and large tour operators would be covered. These one person companies may or may not have websites or Facebook pages that advertise their services, though most don’t do any other marketing; they don’t generally arrange transportation or lodging for customers but might get tickets for a group to Independence Hall or Betsy Ross House for example; they may also make lunch suggestions; and if hired to do a large group, they may subcontract other guides to help them.
Half of our members make money working as a tour guide, and of those, almost 80% do at least some direct booking tours. This could be anywhere from 5-30 tours a year – most of us don’t make enough doing it to warrant an $800/year professional liability policy. Half of those who do direct booking tours make under $2000/year on them.
‘As defined by the policy, a ‘tour operator’ refers to one who makes any transportation, meal, lodging, or guide arrangements. Other duties include, but are not limited to, hiring and paying vendors for goods or services related to the public for sale. Tour Operators are NOT covered by the policy.’ (This was from the original policy FAQs page. The wording has changed with this new 2025 policy but the idea looks to be the same.) This seems to be a little at odds with what is in the FAQs: “You would also be covered for walking or step-on tours resulting from self promotion, such as advertising your services on the internet or elsewhere. The key here is that you would NOT be providing transportation, meals, or lodging.” (But what about museum tickets? Lunch suggestions? Hiring another guide to assist when it is a large group? The “guide arrangements” and “hiring and paying vendors for goods or services related to the public for sale” are unclear.)
NFTGA Answer: The key distinction between a tour guide and a tour operator is whether or not the person in question holds funds paid by tour participants for future payment of food, lodging or transportation. If one holds no funds “in escrow”, one is a tour guide. If one collects ANY funds on behalf of clients, then that person is a tour operator. Once a tour guide accepts money (outside of payment for services of guiding) the liability becomes immense, at least in part because of the possibility of fraud, etc.
A tour guide can plan tours, suggest lunch sites, advertise, etc. It is when funds are collected to pay a third party restaurant, bus company, hotel etc. that the difficulty arises. While this would also be true of museum admissions, I highly doubt that the guide who collects $5 from ten people and then pays at the window for ten tickets, or who collects the money for lunch and puts the tab on his or her credit card would have much cause for concern. I don’t think any reasonable person on a jury would conclude one is a tour operator because the guide put lunch on her/her credit card. I also don’t think there’s much liability in walking through a museum or eating at a restaurant. If someone falls in a museum, s/he will sue the venue; if s/he gets food poisoning, s/he will sue the restaurant.
The hiring of outside guides is a gray area. If I were the guide doing the hiring, I would insist that those I hired had the NFTGA Insurance. In that case there would be no worries. If a guide hires other guides and will provide those guides with a 1099 I’d be concerned. I think most reasonable people would see that as a business activity. I very rarely hire guides myself, but when I do so I pay them in cash. Lastly, most of the companies I work with require me to sign a document stating I’m an independent contractor. If I were going to hire guides, pay them by check, and 1099 them, I’d DEFINITELY have them sign such a document.
I hope this answers your questions adequately. One of the difficulties with insurance is that anyone can be sued for anything, insurance or not. In that regard, I believe purchasing the NFTGA Insurance is better than not having any coverage at all. Our insurance agent does not field individual questions because the answer will always be “it depends”. No one can fully predict what an insurance company or jury will do in any individual specific case. With this insurance, however, you can be sure the insurance carrier will retain legal counsel that will support the individual tour guide.
Lastly, if the NFTGA is good enough for the National Park Service, it’s probably acceptable in most other cases.
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The NFTGA insurance is typically offered in November – January for the calendar year and again in July for half a year. Currently (2026) the mid-year insurance option is not prorated. Please contact the APT Treasurer or President with any questions.
For more information on the NFTGA liability insurance offered, see the Summary of Charges and FAQs pages.