Reports of hundreds of fires sweeping across mainland Greece this
summer was a timely reminder that we can all be caught up in a
disaster, natural or man made, but certainly not of our own making.
Whilst the FCO will be giving out important travel advice and, in
extremis, will have contingency plans in place to extract British
nationals should it ever be deemed necessary, as occurred in 2006 in
the Lebanon, most of us will have to rely on tour operators and local
representatives to look after us when on holiday. This is where a good travel insurance policy comes into play which, when it all starts to go wrong on holiday, you can fall back on to get you out of trouble.
Returning to the fires raging in Greece, and this applies to any natural disaster in other regions of the world, most travel insurance
policies will provide a level of specific cover that can be used to
lessen the impact on the insured holiday maker. This cover will range
from paying for alternative accommodation should the existing
accommodation become uninhabitable to cancelling your trip before you
travel or curtailing the trip once away. Before making such a claim, it
would be normal for your travel insurance
provider to expect the tour operator to provide alternative
accommodation free of any extra charges or offer a refund before making
any settlement.
Cover should also extend, but do check the small print as policies
do differ, to providing emergency medical cover and repatriation in the
event that you or your travelling companions are injured or worse. This
is no different from suffering a road traffic accident but becomes more
complex when incidents are caused as a result of civil commotion and
unrest or, say, a terrorist attack. Some policies provide cover for all
eventualities but you will have to pay a hefty premium for this and you
will have to weigh up the risks of it happening and whether you should
really be there in the first place if looking for cover at this end of
the travel insurance spectrum.
Keith McGregor is a partner of Strawberrysoup, a web design agency with offices in Chichester and Bournemouth. Strawberrysoup specialise in creative web design, content managed websites, search engine optimisation, search engine marketing and graphic design
