Predicted increase in travel insurance sales to Americans
Berkshire Hathaway Travel Protection (BHTP) released a report at the end of January that identifies a potential 4.9-per-cent increase for travel insurance sales to Americans travelling this year. The report, entitled The State of Travel Insurance, includes responses from 573 travellers and 96 travel agencies about their travel habits, travel business, experiences in 2016 and/or expectations for 2017.
It found that 36 per cent of consumers expect to buy more travel insurance in 2017, and nearly 61 per cent of travel agents predict 2017 will be a better year for travel insurance.
“Each year, we do a deep dive into travel-industry trends and forecasts to analyse the correlations and their impact on travel insurance revenues,” explained Dean Sivley, president of BHTP. “This report is one of the ways we seek to fulfil our mission to revolutionise the travel insurance industry.”
According to the report, the 10 most influential factors impacting travel insurance sales in 2017 will be: first, a rise in international leisure trips, which leads to an expected increase in travel insurance sales, given that significantly more international leisure trips are covered by travel insurance (39 per cent) than domestic leisure trips (16 per cent).
The second factor is an increase in trip costs, which leads to higher travel insurance revenues. Third, is consumers intending to buy more travel insurance to protect themselves against flight issues such as cancellations and delays. Fourth, is an increased understanding of how travel insurance works, with 40 per cent of consumers claiming they were buying more travel insurance because they had better knowledge of how travel insurance products work.
The fifth factor expected to impact travel insurance sales in 2017 is increased use of travel agents, with 94 per cent of travel agents claiming to offer travel insurance with every travel sale. Six is family health, seventh is rising interest in cruise travel for 2017, eighth is bucket list travel, ninth is the threat of international terrorism and tenth is an increase in travel to the Caribbean due to Zika no longer being a ‘top-of-mind threat’.