Travel Insurance and Natural Disasters

When planning a trip, the possibility of a natural disaster striking is often overlooked or minimized. Sure, your travelers might make contingency plans if they’re booking a Caribbean cruise during hurricane season or flying through Chicago during winter, but what about the disasters that aren’t predictable - like an earthquake or volcano? How can your travelers plan for those?

Use travel insurance to protect against natural disasters

In short, make sure your clients have a good travel insurance policy that covers against natural disasters. The types of situations covered and the type of coverage itself will vary from provider to provider, so it’s important to understand the ins and outs of the policies you sell to your travelers.

For example, at RoamRight, we consider a natural disaster to be one of the following:

• Earthquake
• Flood
• Fire
• Hurricane
• Blizzard
• Avalanche
• Tornado
• Tsunami
• Volcanic Eruption or
• Landslide due to natural causes.

Travel insurance only covers unforeseen natural disasters

Once a tropical storm is named, it is no longer considered unforeseen and it’s therefore not possible to buy insurance for that Caribbean vacation. The purpose of insurance is to provide protection against all potential unexpected risks - not specific certain known threats. So once a threat develops, coverage will no longer be available.

If you are planning to leave on Friday for a trip to California, and an earthquake strikes on Tuesday, you can’t buy travel insurance on Wednesday and expect to be covered. (You would be covered, though, if an unrelated earthquake hits after you purchased your insurance.)

While this in and of itself is a great reason to offer your clients travel insurance early in the booking process, there are many other reasons why it’s important to get insurance sooner rather than later.

What types of coverage are available?

RoamRight’s plans provide coverage for natural disasters that may strike either in a destination or at home. For example, trip cancellation or interruption coverage is available if your client’s or their traveling companion’s home or their destination is rendered uninhabitable during their trip by fire, flood, or other Natural Disaster.

Trip cancellation or interruption coverage is also available if there is a mandatory evacuation ordered by the local government authorities in your client’s destination. This coverage applies if your client has more than half of their trip remaining in that location.

Finally, natural disasters also impact travelers who don’t live near the disaster and may not be traveling to the disaster. If your clients are military, police or fire personnel who are called into emergency service to provide aid or relief for a natural disaster, trip cancellation coverage is also available.

Protect your travelers against natural disasters

Your travelers deserve the best - and that means they should be insured against the worst. Taking care of them should be more than providing great travel memories, it should be making sure they are protected in any sort of emergency - or natural disaster - that may occur.

Contact us to get more information about offering travel insurance to your clients.