Coronavirus Ruined Your Travel Plans. Here's How Travel Insurance Can Help You
Shoulder season is about to begin. That’s that magical time from April to mid-June (and also September and October) where you can go on holiday and usually enjoy nice weather, lower prices, and smaller crowds.
But the COVID-19 coronavirus has upended most travel plans, at least in the short term. So what should you do?
Phil Sylvester from World Nomads, where I always buy my travel insurance, joined me on the Postcard Academy podcast to talk about how to recoup your travel costs, why ‘cancel for any reason’ insurance might not be worth it, and other travel insurance queries.
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What is coronavirus?
Coronavirus is an umbrella term for a family of viruses, the way tequila is a type of mezcal. Other famous viruses, like the Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), and common cold are also coronaviruses.
COVID-19 is a contagious respiratory virus with flu-like symptoms, and there is no vaccine yet. Most people who catch it won’t get very ill, though the elderly and people with weak immune systems are at risk of serious complications and possibly death.
COVID-19 started in China and spread out. Now, In Italy, which has a very old population, this has meant not enough beds and respirators in the hospitals to treat people. Panic has broken out across the world and many countries have temporarily closed their borders.
So...should I cancel my travel plans?
If you have travel plans within the next two months, you might want to postpone.
Over here in Europe, the EU has closed their borders to outsiders for the next 30 days. And of course, the U.S. has closed its borders to Europe and other parts of the world.
Some countries, including Italy, France, and Spain, have instituted curfews. Museums, parks, and restaurants are closed. No one is going up the Eiffel Tower or eating pizza on the street. So even if you aren’t afraid to travel, the things you’ve traveled to see might not be open, you might get quarantined entering or exiting, and you might not even be allowed into the country you want to visit.
Most airlines are offering refunds and waiving change fees for you to rebook your flight, though you might have to pay a fair difference.
Canceling a trip three months from now might be premature as the situation on the ground is changing fast. Monitor the situation and as the time for your trip nears, contact your AirBnB or hotel and ask what the current situation is.
How can your travel insurance help you?
Travel insurance usually covers people who fall ill or have an accident while on holiday, though known events like pandemics are often excluded. However, If you’re a U.S. resident, World Nomads will cover you if you contract the coronavirus while traveling.
If your country of residency declares the place you’re visiting a ‘no-go’ area, that triggers the cancelation policy of your travel insurance. Contact airlines and hotels directly to get refunds or vouchers, then go to travel insurance to claim your out-of-pocket losses.
What I love about World Nomads is that they actually do want to help you. The people who work there are serious travelers themselves and they don’t want to screw you over.
How travel insurance generally works
Travel Insurance won’t cover you if you buy it after something bad happens, just like you can’t buy fire insurance after your house burns down. The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on January 30, 2020. That day COVID-19 became a known event, meaning if you want to make a travel insurance claim that is related to the virus, you will have had to have purchased your policy before that date.
Make sure that the place you want to visit isn’t on your country of residency’s “no-go” list. If your country deems another country unsafe to visit, your travel insurance might not be valid.
Travel insurance won’t cover you if you’re afraid to go on a trip. There is ‘cancel for any reason’ insurance, but it’s expensive, doesn’t cover out-of-pocket expenses, and not everyone is eligible. New Yorkers, for example, can’t buy it.
Silver linings
You might find some airfare deals now, though not as many as you’d imagine because the airlines are canceling a lot of flights. Many airlines are instituting a policy that if you buy a ticket by the end of March, they’ll waive the change fee if you need to change your flight within the next few months to a year (the time allowance varies by company).
There’s really no downside to this, so I’m going to look into booking some trips a few months from now.
The travel industry has been hit really hard. Instead of straight up cancelling, see if you can change the date of your travel. Let’s do what we can to help small business owners, who make our travel experiences so special.
If you found this article useful, please share it, and subscribe to the Postcard Academy podcast. Each week, expats and adventurers share their insider travel tips on the best food, nightlife, and cultural experiences in the most interesting places around the globe. I’m your host, Sarah Mikutel, an American who's spent the last 10 years living in, and traveling around, Europe.