Tourists take more risks post-Covid
TRAVELLERS are taking out more insurance at higher prices than ever before but taking bucket list risks that are putting them in hospital.
Cover-More Travel Insurance group chief executive Cara Morton said travel habits were definitely changing as a result of two-plus years of border closures and intermittent lockdowns across the world.
“What we are seeing is people doing bucket list activities,” Ms Morton said, adding it was a theme across all of CoverMore’s markets in Australia, New Zealand, North America, Latin America and Europe.
“Across all our lines of business we are seeing more people do those extreme type holidays,” she said. “We’ve had eight paragliding incidents this year, which is well in excess of what we’ve had before. This is people that are seriously injured and it’s definitely a theme we are seeing.”
Whether it’s a consequence of being locked up for so long, rather than rising premiums subconsciously encouraging people to take greater risks remains to be seen.
“Customers are now having to pay 40 to 50 per cent more than they did previously and we are hoping it’s not going to increase the requirements to use it,” she said.
Premiums have increased dramatically for a number of reasons, the first being because travel insurance now includes Covid-19 cover as a standard inclusion.
Now borders have opened and quarantine requirements have largely disappeared, the biggest difficulty for insurers is that flights are full and prices have skyrocketed. Full flights has meant the travel insurance giant has had to become somewhat of a travel expert, with Ms Morton saying that a customer needing to delay a flight by one week in 2019 was easy to deal with but post Covid, often difficult at any price.
Despite premiums being as much as 50 per cent higher than 2019 levels, demand has increased significantly.
Data from Finity Consulting shows the number of overall travellers paying for travel insurance has risen from 56 per cent in 2019 to 70 per cent currently. Ms Morton believes the skyrocketing price of travel will eventually cause a drop in demand, leading to a drop in demand for insurance.