Three Tips: Travel Insurance Isn’t Just For Vacation Destinations

Too often, travelers and agents only think about the destination a traveler is headed to when they consider travel insurance. But after Hurricane Matthew hit this October, for example, travel agents found themselves scrambling not only to assess whether customers’ destinations were still viable, but also to help travelers who just couldn’t leave because of damage to their hometowns.

Travel Insured International offers agents three tips it learned from this past hurricane season:

1. While booking a trip for a client, explain that even though they may not live in, or be traveling to, a destination where a hurricane or winter storm is occurring, their travel plans might still be affected.

2. Travelers whose homes are made uninhabitable due to a storm, forcing a trip to be cancelled, should gather documentation including proof from their homeowners insurance verifying what damage has incurred, from the electric company confirming they are without power, records confirming any other incidents in their home and photographs of the damage.

3. Travelers who were unable to get to the airport for a scheduled departure, or whose trip was interrupted due to a storm, also can provide newspaper or internet articles to document road closures, etc. Notices from town offices, police/fire departments are also accepted forms of proof.

Isaac Cymrot is vice president of industry relations at Travel Insured International.