Travel cancellation cover

Our hectic lifestyles put the pressure on us to ‘book everything in advance’. At the back of our heads is always the thought ‘What if I have to cancel my plan’? In a candid discussion with Ahmed Al Faramawi, Deputy CEO – AMEA, WebBeds, we seek to find answers to this question.

Do you think a traveller should protect his whole itinerary, before travelling? What can go wrong even before you travel? What are your thoughts?
Travellers spend a lot on their holiday or even business travel. Life is such that things can go wrong anytime; plans can get cancelled, people can fall sick, a visa could be refused, or there could be an unfortunate death in
the family.

There are so many reasons for cancelling a travel. A travel cancellation policy is important to ensure that the money spent is not wasted in case things go wrong. In such uncertain times, travellers must protect their travel plans
in advance.

Is there any kind of product that covers this?
Tune Protect has a Travel Cancellation Product that takes care of possible travel expenses incurred by the traveller due to travel cancellation including trip interruption.

What is travel curtailment?
Curtailment, due to insurable reasons, is the most important benefit of the travel cancellation policy. When people cancel or cut short the travel, there are certain costs that they face; costs of curtailment like costs of your hotel stay, sight-seeing tickets, events the traveller has booked, changing the traveller flight tickets and a plethora of other costs, which for the large part is non-refundable. Tune Protect Travel Cancellation Product includes curtailment due to insurable reasons and protects your travel against such events. The product also has other unique covers like visa refusal (within 14 days from the travel date), non-refundable hotel accommodation expenses and more. The other noteworthy feature is the terrorist cover, this protects the traveller in case he cancels his travel due to terrorist activity at the destination.

What do you recommend? Should the traveller cover everything?
Ideally, yes. But the future is unpredictable, and 100% protection is difficult in all cases. Having said that, however, it is extremely important to have an extra cover like the Travel Cancellation Product, which covers the value of travel and allows the traveller peace of mind. And that’s why we at WebBeds AMEA will be offering this important travel protection to our clients via Tune Protect technology and partners, as of Dec 19.