Which tours are perfect for travel insurance? There are some that would clearly benefit from insurance, and others where the value may not be as obvious. The first step in selling travel insurance is to establish a need. (If hang gliders don’t see a need up front, they probably never will.) That general statement applies to all kinds of travel, any time of the year, for any traveler. Still, some common tours have a more inherent need for travel protection and coming into contact with a traveler in one of these situations should be a giant red flag: These people really need it.
High Risk Trips
The easy answer to which tours are most apt to be a good fit and easy sale for travel protection will include travel to ‘hot spots’. Areas of political, economic or civil unrest come to mind. Recently, Greece and Egypt have been on the list with Mexico gaining more favor these days. Another easy answer is ‘risky travel’ like a tour that involves mountain climbing, solo travel or travel by the handicapped. These are no-brainer you-need-insurance tours. Agents would be doing clients a disservice by letting them travel without protection. That same thought can be applied to other, not as obviously risky, tours as well.
First-Timers At Anything
Going off into the unknown as an extreme traveler should be an easy sale; there is real danger there and those going on those tours know it. But there may be as much perceived danger in a first cruise, all-inclusive resort or even a train ride if these are not activities travelers have done before. It’s all about perception. We might know that the odds of someone having a problem on a cruise are slim, but the traveler who has never been on one before does not. Providing a bit of assurance with insurance helps get over the first-timer jitters.
Important question to ask: How often do you travel? It’s a simple enough question and if the answer is something along the lines of “We have not traveled since airlines started charging luggage fees”, this is a prime candidate for travel protection.
Tours That Take Family-Oriented Travelers Away From Home
The farther a family-oriented traveler goes, the more they want to know that they are protected should something happen to them and their family support network is hundreds or thousands of miles away. By the same token, they want assurance that if something happens to an elderly relative, or a family member has health issues or is involved in an accident, the traveler can get back home quickly.
An important question to ask is “Do you or any member of your immediate family have any special dietary needs, physical handicaps or medical issues?” The dietary needs and physical handicaps part of that question establish trust, the medical issues part causes a thought pattern they might not have considered.
50+ Travelers
A member of that generation, when either my wife or myself have a doctor’s check up these days, there is always a bit of apprehension until we get the thumbs up: Everything looks good. Until that moment, there is always a thought “What if we find we have some medical condition that is going to affect the rest of our lives?” We buy annual travel insurance policies for that very reason and never look back. This is a group of people that will either be an easy sale, for exactly that reason, or one of the toughest sales ever, as they try to deny the inherent risk that comes with getting older.
The best approach is to mention travel insurance quite matter of factly when first brought up, as though you both understand that risk factors increase as we age. If the reality is that the client has no clue of those factors, don’t quote them numbers; this is almost always an instant turn off. Instead, relate a personal believable story of someone in their same situation that did not have the protection afforded by insurance and suffered a loss because they did not. Those kinds of stories are quite common and easy to find, use and believe in.
We had a case at RoamRight where a gentleman was traveling through Great Britain and had an unexpected medical emergency. He ultimately needed to take an air ambulance back home to the U.S. Between his hospitalization and his repatriation, his medical expenses came to $117,000. The cost of his RoamRight policy? Just $28. (His policy did not include trip cancellation benefits, and this kept his costs low).
Believing in all of the above is probably the most important ingredient in the recipe for a good relationship with agents, clients and travel insurance. It’s one that can be applied to any tour, although higher risk tours are easier to define. Establish that trust early in the relationship and you’re half way home.