I read the very helpful discussion of using brand/company names in fiction (Use of real organization in fiction) and have read other resources on the internet but have not been able to find one question answered:
My story involves an evil travel agency that abducts its clients. Since the travel agency supposedly operates in the Balkans, I gave this fictitious company a very generic name: Balkan Tours.
However, it now occurs to me that somewhere out there is a company called Balkan Tours (several, in fact— it's like calling an Indian restaurant "Taj Mahal"). There is no likeness drawn between the companies except for the use of the name. Moreover, we've created an original visual identity for the Balkan Tours in our story (it's actually a computer game production): a business card appears at one point with a logo of my creation.
How concerned should I be that one of the tiny little Balkan Tours operators out there will bring a defamation suit against me? At a certain point, it becomes impossible to guarantee that there is no company in existence with the same name as one's fictitious company, so I would hope there's some common-sense standard around this.
Thank you.