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| beautiful lagoon waters (c) 2017 by David Ourisman, all rights reserved |
Who pays when something goes wrong on your vacation? One of the travel blogs that I regularly follow, Ben Schlappig's One Mile at a Time, relayed the sad story of a missed night during a couple's honeymoon. Their flight from Moorea to Bora Bora had a stop at Huahine. There it suffered a mechanical breakdown and was unable to continue to their final destination. Ten hours later, Air Tahiti sent a replacement plane, but due to high winds in Bora Bora, the plane was unable to make the flight until the next morning.
So they missed their first night in Bora Bora at a (very) expensive resort, and they lost the amount they had paid for their first night at the resort.
Question: how could they have protected against this?
Answer: travel insurance
Problem: travel insurance policies are not created equal
We work almost exclusively with Travelex, Brownell's preferred travel protection partner for many years. I spoke with a telephone representative of Travelex this morning, and I asked her about the particular situation I read about on Ben's blog. She told me the following.
Trip Interruption coverage would have been activated by a delay of a Common Carrier caused by a mechanical breakdown, weather delay, or strike. Such a policy benefit would have covered their unused travel arrangements resulting from this delay up to 100% of the amount of cancellation protection and Trip Interruption purchased (for a Travel Basic policy) or 150% of the interruption protection purchased (for a Travel Select or Travel Max policy). [language revised 12:08 p.m. as suggested by Laura Heidt]
What about the travel insurance from your credit card? The devil's in the details, so I checked out those details. American Express Platinum does not include a travel interruption component. Citi Prestige offers travel interruption coverage if you miss "more than half of [your] Trip because of missed connections, delayed departures, etc." Citi Sapphire Reserve states that interruption coverage does not apply from "Common Carrier caused delays, unless they are as a result of an organized strike that affects public transportation." Visa Signature provides neither Trip Cancellation nor Trip Interruption coverage.
link for Travelex travel protection
Let me stress that you should rely only on the representations of your travel insurance carrier for their authoritative answers to what would or would not be covered by your policy.
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