Safe-Journey has been launched by International Travel and Healthcare, and is “designed to complement existing travel insurance policies”.
The policy, which costs cost £4.60 for a two-week single trip, (an annual multi-trip policy costs £13.92), covers disinclination to travel, enabling travellers to cancel their trip if it is due to take place within six weeks of a terror attack occurring in the destination they are travelling to.
It also allows travellers that find themselves in an area affected by terrorism to curtail their trip, benefits, which the company claims, are not offered by traditional travel insurance. It will also assist with return travel arrangements.
Managing director Kate Huet told TTG the company was keen to work with agents to start selling the product through the trade.
“We’re in the very early stages of the launch, but we’re absolutely desperate to embrace travel agents, because they are so well placed to say to people about the product.”
Huet added that she was eager to arrange commercial terms with any interested agents. “We would of course make sure it was commercially viable for them and we would be keen to come to an agreement with the trade.”
She said the offering was conceived in the wake of the Tunisian massacre last June, after the UK Foreign Office delayed imposing its travel restrictions. “It’s taken 12 months to put together, but it was triggered by Sousse – there were people that were indirectly affected. It took nine days for the FCO to change their advice and in that time there were dozens of flights a day, and thousands of people that were due to travel out there.”
Huet said the company had considered area size when referring to “areas affected by terrorism”, and that the policy would apply to big cities as well as their outer areas. If Westminster was hit by a terror attack for example, travellers due to travel to Greater London – several miles from the incident - would still be able to cancel their plans.
She said the company had also been careful to consider the definition of terrorism. “We’ve identified three ways of defining terrorism, because sometimes politics can get involves and countries might not always declare it as that,” she told TTG.
“Firstly if the government in this country [the UK] defines it as a terrorist threat; secondly if the government in the country it occurred declares it to be terrorism, or lastly, if we ourselves believe there is sufficient information to suggest it was a terrorist attack, for example if a group claims responsibility.”
