CNN, Jan 29, 2021 – How much Covid-19 protection does travel insurance offer in 2021?
People who had travel insurance in 2020 found that their policies offered little protection against the global pandemic that dramatically upended trips all over the world.
So what kind of reassurance does travel insurance provide in 2021?
Given the fine print and complexities around insurance, the answer isn’t straightforward, but the bottom line is that US consumers can expect more benefits out of their travel insurance going forward than they did before.
And following a year that brought travel to a crawl and decimated the industry in the wake of Covid-19, that’s good news for globetrotters eager to get back out into the world.
Sales of travel insurance in the United States were booming before the pandemic.
According to a US Travel Insurance Association study released in 2019, Americans spent nearly $3.8 billion on travel protection in 2018 including on policies for trip cancellation and interruption, emergency medical and medical evacuation. This number was a 40.9% increase from 2016, the study said.
The coronavirus pandemic was an unprecedented event, and when it hit, according to Megan Moncrief, the chief marketing officer for the travel insurance comparison site SquareMouth, very few policies protected travelers from the financial losses they saw from not being able to travel or having their trips interrupted.
This is mainly because many policies didn’t include coverage for pandemics.
“A handful of policies covered trips that were impacted by government issued travel alerts and CDC alerts, but most travelers who bought insurance weren’t covered by their policies,” says Moncrief. “They saw losses left and right.”
Read the full CNN article online here: https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/travel-insurance-pandemic-2021/index.html