Travel insurance advert..

[CollisionCourse]

I really hope the girl recovers well and is home as quickly as possible. But seriously, travel insurance!

BBC News - 'I thought she was dead': Teen hit by paraglider on family holiday
www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gx57j38ljo

Yes this has been on our local FB pages sharing for donations. Such an awful situation and does really make it clear how important having travel insurance is.

It's the absolute desperation when something terrible happens but the side stepping of any responsibility beforehand at booking stage with stories like this... I wonder if there should be a much bigger push from travel companies to get you to buy even basic insurance? I love to moan about insurance companies in general and they make it harder than need be sometimes, but to not buy it at all is just too reckless, you do have to accept some responsibility.

Crowd funding effectively works in the same way as insurance with very slight differences.

With insurance everyone who is going to travel agrees among themselves that between them they will pay for any disastrous situations that arise while they are on holiday. Most people don't have a disaster and are fine but their contributions pay for those who do. For convenience a third-party calculates what each person's contribution should be based on the magnitude of their risks and they take a modest cut of the money for their admin and running costs.

Or with the Crowd Funding model instead you don't pay in advance but in retrospect once a disaster happens you explain how bad the disaster was and hope that sympathetic people who empathise with how awful it must have been for you each contribute some of the costs incurred.

I firmly believe that only people who don't buy travel insurance should contribute to these fundraisers, and I wouldn't like to be part of the fundraiser model myself because with no neutral third party administering it, there's lots of potential for abuse. However if everyone who goes on holiday without insurance sets aside an annual budget for donating to travel-disaster crowdfunders the effect would be almost the same.

I've seen a lot of go fund mes for people who've had a bad accident while abroad. I know the girl was just sitting in a cafe when the paraglider hit her, but that's why insurance is necessary.

I cannot understand why people go abroad without insurance. It’s just so risky.

@MarketValveForks What you say makes sense, and as a model it makes sense... The added stress though and the uncertainty, the few quid you'd paid in advance would be worth it a thousand times over before you even get to medical bills 😱 And I can't understand how people take that risk with their children, that they would have to take time away from their bedside to write begging letters, that they would have to stay abroad longer than necessary while they found the money etc. I do wonder if some kind of basic insurance could be worked into these holiday packages to save a lot of strife?!

@CollisionCourse oh I totally agree with you. It's just interesting from a Sociological point of view that this parallel system has emerged with the age of social media. The general concept of sharing the costs of the most unfortunate among the wallets of those more fortunate is the basis on which the insurance industry was founded and is common to both systems. The insurance model is much more sensible!

Yes exactly! And it is interesting. It's the same principle, except the "write a begging letter and hope for the best" model is unregulated and unpredictable, so surely must be the preserve of those who have a much higher risk appetite than I do, but also are likely a bit daft. As I say, I really hope that it turns out for the best for this girl, but we can't pretend that a proportion of the family's stress couldn't have been prevented by the family themselves. But there are plenty like them, maybe there could be a way to help before it gets dramatic?!

To be honest OP I don’t think the travel companies could do much more to prompt people! If you book online with Jet2 for example before you check out it pops up offering you their travel insurance before you check out as an add on and we booked a trip in our local Hays Travel a few months ago and they also asked if we wanted to book our travel insurance when booking. It is a choice not to book it now which is fair enough but this shows why it is so needed