Bad-Weather Travel: How Travel Insurance Can Help
All sorts of bad weather can impact a trip in a lot of ways– and travel insurance can come in handy in many of those situations. In fact, travel insurance can help in three distinct ways when bad weather strikes:
- By covering trip cancellation and interruption for certain weather-related issues
- By paying for medical expenses due to weather-related medical emergencies if you suffer an illness or injury during travel
- By providing emergency travel assistance or helping you make alternate arrangements if you’re lost, stuck, or stranded because of weather-related issues
Let’s look at each of these ways travel insurance can help in bad-weather travel situations.
By Covering Trip Cancellation and Interruption
Travel insurance will not cover you for weather-related travel issues caused by a named storm if you bought your coverage after that storm was forecasted and named. Insurance just isn’t designed for events that are expected.
In other words, you would be covered for certain weather-related travel disruptions if you bought travel insurance for a trip to Gulf Shores, when Tropical Storm Laura was an unnamed, unorganized bunch of rain in the southern Atlantic. If you bought it after it was named Tropical Storm Laura, you wouldn’t.
Assuming you bought travel insurance before a storm is forecasted, you’d be covered if the storm made travel to your destination impossible due to mandatory evacuation or made your destination accommodations uninhabitable. Travel insurance can cover you if you had to cancel or interrupt a trip under those circumstances.
However, travel insurance can also cover you if you have to cancel or interrupt a trip if the same thing happens back home – so if you lived in Gulf Shores and were in London when Hurricane Laura struck, travel insurance would cover you if you had to interrupt your trip and hurry back home because your home was made uninhabitable.
In addition, the Travel Delay coverage included with Generali plans can help if you experience weather-related delays for the amount of time specified in your plan documents.
Finally, if you have to buy a last-minute plan ticket home because you had a covered weather-related trip interruption, travel insurance can help pay those additional costs.
By Paying For Weather-Related Medical Expenses
So a storm strikes during your vacation and a palm tree crashes through your lanai and breaks your leg. The Medical and Dental coverage included in Generali plans can help cover expenses related to your treatment.
And we hope this never happens, but if weather-related injuries require evacuation, or if weather-related road closures force you to be medevac’d, travel insurance with emergency medical evacuation coverage can help pay for those expenses as well.
The number of medical emergencies can spike around storms and other bad weather. Fortunately, travel insurance is there to help.
By Providing Emergency Travel Assistance
Sometimes insurance can’t help with the most pressing needs associated with bad-weather travel. Sometimes it’s the services included with a travel protection plan that are most helpful, such as help returning a rental car or rebooking.
Every Generali travel protection plan comes with 24/7 travel support and concierge services. Generali’s travel assistance professionals have seen many storms and weather emergencies, and they know what help is needed and how to get it to you.
In addition, if travel has played havoc with you flights, Generali’s travel assistance services can help you rebook and keep traveling. They can even help you catch up with a cruise, if travel issues caused you to miss a sailing.
Weather-related travel issues can strike just about any time of year, whether it’s a snowstorm in winter or hurricane in the summer. Travel protection is an important part of any trip… no matter what the weather throws at you.
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