Advising Your Clients: Travel Insurance Isn’t a Luxury Expense

Very often, consumers view travel insurance as an extra, optional expense, exclusively for travel abroad. While it does provide more necessary coverage for travel abroad, This perception could put their holiday at risk.

Travel insurance is, by all means, optional. However, there are a lot of cases in which is could be a life saver. This includes travel abroad, and domestic travel. Now especially, travel insurance is becoming more of a serious expense to consider with the effects of political unrest and climate change around the globe.

As a travel professional, you cannot advise a traveller on exactly what to do in this situation. In saying that, it is absolutely your job to ensure that your clients are well informed and understand their options properly. This includes making them aware of potential risks in their chosen destination and letting them know about what they might want insurance for, such as medical cover if they’re planning to go abroad to ski, for example.

In the same way, it’s important that travellers are made aware of what insurance may cover on their domestic holiday. While it does not require cover for medical costs, it can cover emergencies, cancellations, any damages, and more. While it is entirely in their hands to make a decision on if they want travel insurance, it is still vital that they are made aware of what could be impacted by having or not having travel insurance so they can make an informed decision.

What Should Clients Be Made Aware of Surrounding Travel Insurance?

There are many benefits to having good insurance, whether it is a holiday abroad or a domestic trip. Travel insurance as a baseline is great to give a little extra money for, but it’s important to encourage consumers to look into the right insurance for their holiday.

Getting the cheapest travel insurance may not provide much help at all. For this, we recommend travel businesses point out the things a consumer may need to look out for when purchasing insurance. This could include any specific activities they’re doing, any valuables they may take, and situation-specific cancellation costs.

These points apply wherever the holiday takes place. The main difference between insurance for abroad and domestic, will be medical costs. As the traveller is remaining in the UK for a domestic holiday, medical costs aren’t a concern since they are covered by the NHS regardless of region.

Though it will not cover medical costs on domestic holidays, insurance will still cover some cancellation and stolen items costs. Whether a consumer needs to cancel their holiday due to illness or an unexpected event, or they’ve lost a valuable item that isn’t covered as part of their household property, travel insurance is valuable in these situations.

Ultimately, in these situations, if something is not covered by the Package Travel Regulations, insurance may be able to provide them with a way to get their money back. For this reason, this is good information to share alongside information on how the PTRs protect their holiday.

It is also important to encourage consumers to read through the terms of an insurance contract thoroughly before they sign it, and keep relevant information such as contact numbers on hand when they go on holiday, the same as they would for information concerning the holiday booking.

If you’d like to learn more about how PTS protect your consumers, please get in contact with one of Protected Trust Services’ (PTS) lovely staff members by calling 0207 190 9988. Or, you can visit our member support and travel trust account pages to learn more about how we protect you.