AIBU to ask why people don’t take out travel insurance when booking a holiday?

[Frannyhy]

I’m an Airbnb host. Guest due tomorrow has had to cancel. I won’t refund her, and I’ve just heard that Airbnb have agreed with me after she went to them for help.

She’s going to lose around £600. I’ll normally refund if I can rebook, but I won’t this time because the lady rang me and swore at me when I told her to take the matter through Airbnb.

So to those of you who don’t think travel insurance is necessary, why not?

What if you lose valuable items whilst on a UK break?

I tend not to bother for UK breaks. I always look at the terms and conditions and try to pick ones that let you cancel up to a certain date or just book last minute. I accept that I will lose the money if we can't go beyond that date. We have our important possessions covered under our home insurance anyway.

This

We had annual cover through our bank and it covered us when the Airbnb owner said "well I'm happy to host you" but it was illegal to travel.

Totally agree with this ! We have had to claim twice and the companies wriggled out of paying almost everything !

We still take out insurance but the only one I am really interested in is medical cover and that’s done by our health insurers .

Many , many scenarios/ events will not be covered . I remember something as simple as passports were stolen from our villa . No cover because they weren’t stolen from our person ……

We live in Ireland and I assumed that TI must be different in the UK judging by the number of times posters tell others to ‘claim it off your insurance ‘ .

I don't take it out because the three times I have tried to claim on it the insurer has failed to pay out. It's just not worth it to me. I don't blame her for not having it.

She shouldn't have sworn at you though! Rude cow.

Have to admit it wouldn't have occurred to me to book travel insurance for a UK break previously, but the annual insurance I have through my bank covers 2+ nights for UK breaks now, for specific reasons though obviously.

Like so many others, I've never taken out insurance for UK holidays.
Financially, it doesn't make sense. Yes, on this one occasion , if the insurance covered the reason, she'd have got back more than she paid out, but not if you balance it with another 40 years of paying insurance and never needing it. Financially, it makes more sense to suck up the loss one year.

I wouldn't dream of going abroad without it, but that is overwhelmingly to cover medical costs - the lost / stolen good thing is just a bonus of it.

one rule with insurers is to never accept their first word.

It’s not easy to get cheap travel insurance with health conditions though which is why a lot of people risk it especially if travelling in Europe where they should get hospital care etc , contents cover often covers possessions away from home too

Its not a legal requirement. So take your chances and pay the price.
I rarely bother with it.
currently in Italy hoping I haven’t jinxed the next week.

People going on about cost - it’s very cheap compared to other insurances. And I have a number of life threatening illnesses.

Someone above says ‘savings is always cheaper’ - I’ve had annual insurance before for £30 and I claimed back 500 for a stolen handbag. So savings certainly wouldn’t be cheaper. Have claimed for another bag another time and that was a few hundred back and used it for minor medical issues too which needed a private surgeon.

We don't. We do Uk breaks so not hugely expensive, and we tend to book last minute but we've never needed to use insurance either.
If something did prevent us from going, well, we'd pay for a holiday we didn't use, but after 25 years of holidays I think we'd still be quids in.

I always get insurance but I left it quite late to get it this year. When we booked the holiday my DD had a medical issue that she was waiting on a referral for but we didn't know what the outcome would be. Thought it was better to wait to have all the information then we could get the most suitable policy rather than buying one that then might not cover any issues that arose following further investigation.

I'm going by ferry and did book the fully flexible ticket this year which I wouldn't usually do, just in case.

I have an annual all-year round cover for travel in Europe. Also, since Covid, I've always booked the (usually more expensive) options for hotels/airbnbs both in Europe and in the UK which allow cancellation/re-booking until a couple of days beforehand, which mitigates my risk slightly.

I wouldn't for a UK break. Unless it was very expensive.

Problem is it's not always the affected person that pays the price. On another thread someone's got a mum who remortgaged house to pay for someone medical treatment with no insurance or they raise a go fund me expecting someone else to stump up the cost when they can't.

I notice 89% have voted YANBU. I’d be astonished if 89% took out insurance for UK holidays.

I insure for costs I can’t bear. I can bear the cost of accommodation on a holiday I’ve cancelled, after all, I’ve already committed that money, so I don’t pay for insurance. I can’t bear the cost of repatriation of DH’s body from overseas, so I insure.

I probably wouldn’t for a UK holiday, I imagine you would only be covered in very specific situations, plus for the one or two cancellations you might make in your lifetime it wouldn’t be worth the premium.

Sorry you got sworn at, what an idiot.

… for travelling abroad I always would, for medical and repatriation. It would be nuts not to.

Insurance costs a lot and they always fight not to pay out, which ends up being a huge hassle. It’s so rare that anything goes wrong, I would just suck it up. Of course I would get insurance for a holiday abroad because medical costs can be high, but for a UK break where I could access the NHS I wouldn’t bother.

I've never taken it for UK breaks. Needing to cancel is a risk I'm prepared to take. (Although actually I have annual cover currently).

I always take it for foreign travel although did nearly get caught out this year when I realised late in the day that DS isn't covered on our family policy now he's 18yo and working.

In the EU. Types of policies may very here but I've never bothered with cancelation insurance because the set of circumstances they'll pay out for is so heavily restricted.

I do make sure to always have travel medical coverage including repatriation cover. This includes intra-EU travel - learned that one the hard way since having my appendix out visiting France at 18. We did get reimbursed but at domestic cost levels, and as the devil would have it this was one type of procedure significantly more expensive in France than at home.

I tend not to bother for UK breaks and I always look for accomodation that has free cancellation up until fairly close to the date, unless I am booking last minute anyway. The big hotel chains like Premier Inn all have a cancel up to 1pm on the day option and increasing numbers of Airbnb's etc have flexible cancellation policies too. My home insurance has quite good cover for personal belongings, I've got separate cycling insurance and I can't really think of any circumstances when I might need health cover in this country so why would I need travel insurance. Abroad is different, but I can't see the point in the UK. If I was booking an expensive holiday in thus country I might look at it, from the cancellation perspective, but we tend to only go away from long weekends at most.

Only the other day on a Facebook page there was what could only be construed as a begging post. A single parent had gone away without insurance abroad and had ended up in ICU. They apparently needed funds to get the child home and to continue medical treatment for themselves,Savings would not be sufficient here to cover costs. They seemed to be considering Go Fund Me. It was complicated as they were too I'll to arrange finance etc themselves too.