Don’t leave home without checking travel insurance
Along with batteries and storm shutters, some South Floridians are adding one more item to their hurricane preparation checklist: Travel insurance, to make sure their cruises and vacation tours don’t get blown off course.
Some of the busiest storm seasons on record, coupled with the string of terrorist attacks worldwide that began with Sept. 11, 2001, have boosted the travel insurance industry to record sales. The U.S. Travel Insurance Association estimated almost 35 percent of leisure travelers bought policies last year, compared with 10 percent in the years before 9-11, for a total of $1.1 billion.
This peace of mind typically costs cautious vacationers several hundred dollars, as prices run about 4 to 8 percent of the cost of the trip. Yet state insurance officials say consumers often are unaware of what these sometimes complicated policies will or will not cover, and under what conditions benefits kick in.
They urge travelers to study the fine print carefully before they buy.
“The key thing is these plans vary greatly. So read the policy in advance if you really are depending on it,” said Nina Banister, spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Financial Services, which regulates insurance carriers.
The state has received 217 inquiries — questions and complaints — about travel insurance since July 2003, with 15 involving coverage during hurricanes. Banister said one of the most common complaints was from buyers whose pre-existing medical conditions voided their coverage when they could not take their trip because of health concerns.
Florida is one of the nation’s most active travel insurance markets, because it has a large retiree population, said Janet Stevens, manager of travel agency services for the AAA Auto Club South. Seniors are more likely than younger travelers to take longer, more expensive trips and deal with health problems or storms impacting their plans.
Retirees Virginia Shobe and Kathryn Sauer decided to spend $259 each to insure the Alaskan cruise they bought from AAA last year. “We didn’t give it a second thought,” said Shobe, of Hollywood.
But the day they were supposed to fly out to the West Coast and catch their ship, Hurricane Katrina closed the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. It took some time to straighten out the rebooking but the two friends are leaving on their trip this week, and have not had to pay any additional penalty fees.
More frequent hurricanes, and tourists’ growing fear of terrorism and potential pandemics like bird flu, have prompted travel insurers to offer new or improved products, said Peter J. Evans, executive vice president of InsureMyTrip.com, the country’s largest Internet travel insurance broker.
The best policies now will refund travelers if their destination resort or island is uninhabitable due to a storm, Evans said, not just if the departure airport or port is hit by a hurricane.
And several carriers are offering “cancel for any reason” coverage, where purchasers can get up to 75 percent of the trip cost back if they chose to back out.
“There could be nothing more than the threat of a storm and you can decide you don’t want to go,” Evans said.
AccessAmerica, one of the larger carriers, also has a 24-hour emergency message service that can relay information to family members when one is trapped in a disaster zone.
The system got a workout last year, said AccessAmerica spokeswoman Emily Porter, with Hurricane Katrina and the Indian Ocean tsunami.
“As long as people continue to travel, and the unsettled nature of the world and the weather, we think there will continue to be a higher demand for policies,” she said.
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