Your complete travel protection plan

Saroj Kumar Sinha, Manager – Relationship & Destination Management, Al Rostamani Travel & Holidays; and Arijit Munshi, General Manager, Tune Protect share insights into the necessity for obtaining a comprehensive travel protection cover.

Saroj Kumar Sinha, Manager – Relationship & Destination Management, Al Rostamani Travel & Holidays
Why would you recommend a travel protection plan?
Often, travellers begin the journey uninsured because travel insurance seems like a superfluous expense to them where money spent is money wasted. Leisure travellers are usually price-sensitive and business travellers are too focused on meeting deadlines. However, if flight delays, cancellations, lost baggage, medical emergencies or misplaced travel tickets do happen before, during or after they return, the realisation of the missing insurance dawns on the traveller; and it is then too late. There is nothing worse than sending a traveller to experience an amazing holiday or on a business trip only to have them contact us about lost luggage or being stuck at an airport. It’s an unfortunate mishap but can happen; hence we always advise travellers to take the precaution available that is Travel protection plans for a peace of mind.

When is the correct time for purchasing a travel protection cover?
The right time to purchase travel protection plans is when a traveller has finalised the holiday or business trip and not a mere afterthought. A standard travel protection cover is generally during the journey of the traveller for business or leisure; it should come into effect even before the traveller starts the journey from home. In fact, cancellation costs under defined circumstances are one of the key benefits of the ‘before’ element embedded within the ‘travel assurance’ products. Such benefits cover emergency-related events that might take place even before the journey. 

Arijit Munshi, General Manager, Tune Protect – EMEIA
For business travellers if they are already covered under the company’s Global Corporate Medical plan, what further benefits do they need to evaluate?
Travellers with a corporate medical cover often have the misconception that they are covered for all unforeseen events while travelling abroad. However, the fact is that in such a corporate or individual medical cover provided in the country of residence, the traveller may not have international cover until and unless the need has been specified to the provider. The local medical cover will often not extend the peace of mind to the travellers when it comes to lost baggage, travel cancellations, delayed flight and more. The right thing a corporate traveller should do is take a travel protection with broad range of benefits to cover as much as possible unforeseen events that might happen.

While travelling to EU countries, Georgia,Turkey, travel insurance should be compliant. What benefits travellers can look at for these countries?
In this case, a traveller will require Schengen compliant travel insurance cover as majority of European countries come under the ambit of Schengen regulations. As many as 26 countries under the Schengen mark would require travel cover with a set of benefits as a mandate without which one would not be able to obtain a Schengen visa.