Allianz Partners Adds 12 New Covered Events to Travel Insurance Offerings

Allianz Partners on Monday unveiled a number of new enhancements and additions to its travel insurance offerings that it says will help more travelers.

“The world is a rapidly changing place and consumers’ travel needs and habits have changed as well,” said Richard Aquino, vice president and head of sales at Allianz Partners USA. “We’re proud to introduce significant new enhancements to our retail channel products that will better serve both our retail channel partners and the many consumers who count on us to protect their trips.”

The enhancements are now available in 37 U.S. states (travel advisors are best checking specific plans for benefits and covered reasons). Here’s what is new:

• 12 new covered events for trip cancellation and trip interruption. That list now includes first responder call to duty, school year extension, veterinary emergency, denied boarding due to a medical reason, inability to receive a vaccination, adoption, new employment, visa refusal, theft or mechanical breakdown, covered illness/injury of a business partner, illness/injury/death of a caregiver, and theft of travel documents. With those 12, Allianz now covers 30-plus reasons for trip cancellation and/or interruption in most of its retail plans.
• Increase in maximum trip length and period of time when an insurance policy can be in force. The maximum trip length has been extended from 180 days to 366 days and a travel insurance policy can now be in force for up to 1,095 days—up from 770 days. The increase in maximum policy length will now allow travelers who have to rebook a trip the opportunity to move their policy’s effective dates up to 3 years in the future to match the dates of their rebooked trip.
• Retention of benefits, including free inclusion of kids on Classic products.

Allianz also recently unveiled data from its holiday travel roundup, compiling data from almost 3 million different itineraries built by consumers via OTAs or advisors. The rankings are based on roundtrip flights departing from U.S. airports from Dec. 17 through Dec. 29.

Domestic travel is still dominating the plans of Americans who are traveling this holiday season—89% of those itineraries are for other U.S. destinations—and the cities that usually appear at the top of the list are back again in 2022 with New York ranking first followed by Seattle, Orlando, Phoenix, and Los Angeles.

The big changes in the survey come from international travel, which, while a less popular choice for Americans during the holiday season, still represents 11% of those 3 million itineraries.

London, for the first time since the survey’s inception in 2015 when it was ranked the number one international destination for U.S. holiday travelers, ranked third in this year’s survey, which shows that the appetite for European travel is still high amongst Americans.