Travel Insurance and the Corona Virus

Will the Cost of Your Trip be Protected?

Author: The Traveling Professor/Tuesday, February 25, 2020/Categories: Travel Tips

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The Corona virus is above all, a threat to human health and life.  We should not underestimate that this is our primary concern. 

There are people who have planned trips overseas and are concerned about their health and about protecting the cost of their trips. In today's blog post, The Traveling Professor makes some observations about these topics:

Travel Insurance:  Most travel protection plans exclude losses caused directly or indirectly by an epidemic, regardless of when a policy has been purchased.  A possible strategy for protecting yourself would be to purchase a more expensive "cancel for any reason" travel plan.  However, most "cancel for any reason" policies only offer 50% or 75% return of covered expenses. 

Airlines:  Airlines traveling to China are for the most part, offering waivers in change fees or complete refunds of tickets for those flying to China and highly affected areas. If airlines cancel flights, the customer is due a refund.  If the virus spreads and becomes more serious, I would expect airlines to extend similar policies to other affected destinations.

Cancelling a Travel Insurance Plan:  Let's say you have purchased a travel insurance plan for a trip to an affected area and the tour operator cancels the trip due to reasons related to the Corona virus.  Now that the policy doesn't cover you, was it a wasted expense?  Not necessarily.  Some insurance companies are offering refunds or credits on the cost of the travel insurance policy.

 

 

 

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