Swine Flu and Travel Insurance
This item is meant to provide some clarification as to the travel insurance cover available for persons concerned with the swine flu outbreak.
Claims relating to cancellation of holidays to destinations that the Foreign Office has advised against travelling to are not generally covered under a large proportion of travel insurance policies. This is partly because where a holiday is booked through a Tour Operator, they will usually agree to cancellation or re arranging of the holiday at no cost to the customer. The situation in Mexico and around the world is clearly very unusual and, with this in mind, if cover and travel have been booked prior to the announcement that it was unsafe to travel to Mexico, JS Insurance has decided that it will be pragmatic in its decision making and look favourably at the policies it underwrites, providing the traveller could not recover costs from other sources such as the airline, hotel or tour operator and provided the customer has purchased an AXA Superplus or AXA Annual policy.
Travellers who are now planning their trips need to be aware of potential limitations in cover and make sure they are arranging the cover they need, resisting the temptation perhaps to focus solely on price. The problems are particularly acute where holidays have been booked independently, and for this reason JS Insurance made available an ‘Independent Traveller’ extension on its direct policies which provides additional cover in exactly these circumstances, as mentioned above this is available with the AXA Superplus Single Trip policy and the AXA Annual policy only.
Independent Traveller Cover is only valid for those who have not purchased their holidays as a package.
So for example, if they have purchased transport and accommodation from two seperate sources this would not be defined as a package and so would be covered under the Independent Traveller Cover offer by JS Insurance.