Insurance for Airbnb/accommodation if flights are cancelled

[Gremlin1]

If your flights are cancelled by the airline and you can't get to your destination (Airbnb), and still have to pay for it, is it standard for the accommodation costs to be covered by insurance?

Has anyone experienced this or can anyone recommend a policy which would cover this?

Had our flights cancelled last year so slightly paranoid about this year's holiday!

Good question, we always book airbnbs and flights separately

I have travel insurance and assumed that this sort of thing would be covered, perhaps thats naive and I need to check

But, if the flights are canclled, you just get a later flight surely? You wouldnt not go at all I assume?

Well ideally, but last year we couldn't actually get flights out to our destination so ended up having to cancel the whole holiday! So just wondering if we'd be covered for that.

(Fortunately last year our hotel didn't charge us)

Hi, i work in travel cover- they will more than likely ask you to try and get a refund from the air bnb first, if this isn't possible then it will be covered under your insurance you'll just be asked to provide proof they won't refund so an email from them for example. It can make it lengthy if the host takes a while to reply so if they send t&c's when booking it's always worth keeping them as they will normally say in them if they won't refund if you cancel within 7days ect which the travel provider should accept without you having to do anything else. Of course just make sure you get a decent policy and not a £3 one that covers for nothing. Main thing to check will be the amount you're covered for for cancellation- most decent policies will be around 3-5k per person x

That's really good to know, thank you. So hopefully any decent policy will cover this.

Why would an accommodation provider put themselves out of pocket for the benefit of an insurance company?

Another protection measure would be to pay for your flights and hotel on a credit card, then you have section 75 cover.

This gives you consequential loss protection, so if the flight is cancelled and you have knock on accommodation costs, the credit card with pay if your insurance doesn't.

Or you can get new flights even if they're more expensive and your CC will pay the difference. Which is what we did when Monarch went bust and we had to pay about £1k to get new flights from another airline.

Yes, we've had this situation where we had to cancel a holiday due to my DH having an accident and insurance asked us to try and get a refund with Airbnb, but we did get the money back without a quibble when we provided proof that the owner didn't allow it. Minus a large excess per person though, including my 6 month old🙄, which I never really realised the excess was due per person not per holiday!

Thanks so much for your replies!