Who to claim costs off - travel or house insurance- when curtailing a holiday to return home

[LindaDawn]

We have just had to return from a oversea holiday 9 days early owing to a flood damage home. The question is who fo we contact to claim for emergency flight home and the cost of the accommodation we didn’t use? Not sure if it’s travel or house insurance to make a claim.
We will be claiming using our house insurance for the flood damage.

Is it your house that was flooded or the holiday accommodation? If it’s yours does either of your insurances cover travelling back for these circumstances, did you contact them before flying?

I would try your travel insurance but be prepared for neither to cover it.

It is our home that is flooded and no we didn’t ask either our travel or house insurers. We just needed to get a flight home as soon as we knew (next day) . Not too worried about claiming the flight back as it was very cheap, more the money we have already paid out for 9:days accommodation we didn’t use.

Why do you think neither would cover it!

I would have thought it would be the other way round and they may pay for your flight home if they were to cover anything at all but less likely to pay for missed holiday days. I don't know which it would fall under though, I can’t see it being under either really but potentially travel insurance if you have a decent one.

It may or may not be covered. Strictly speaking did you HAVE to come home? Like we need to come home to see granny before she dies - yes. We need to come home because we can't possibly leave our house with a leak for another day, maybe not. OR maybe. I would just ask both and see if either do cover it, there's no point guessing.

You will need to read your insurance documents.

They will be able to answer this.

We will not.

Read the PDF for your travel insurance carefully, most will have a clause about having to cut your holiday short because of family illness/death, I would be very surprised if they would pay out for what you describe because technically you could get someone else to sort it out but you chose to travel home (not saying that is reasonable, just pointing out the legal argument) but if there is a clause you could rely on it would be there. I don’t think there is any way that your house insurance would cover it.

We did need to come home as the electrics weren’t working, the whole house is flooded and we can’t live there. Now living with family until we get a response from home insurerers
We couldn’t stay on holiday knowing the state of our house.

I can't imagine that any of that will be covered but as others said you need to read your policy to find out.

If you can’t stay there then won’t the insurers just say you could have stayed away? Instead of coming home to someone else’s house.

I doubt travel insurance would cover it because you could have stayed on holiday.

Home insurance won’t cover holidays. I think all you could have done was asked the company/owner of the hotel to be nice and change the dates.

You will need to read your policy documents.

But it’s very unlikely that your home insurance will pay for your flights / accommodation that you’ve forfeited - it’s not a usual inclusion in any home insurance policy I’m aware of.

Travel insurance is more likely to cover you for cancelled/ curtailed travel plans, and I am aware of providers covering for specific events like flood or fire or even break in at main residence. But need to check your policy documents and speak to your provider, as there maybe exclusions or limits to amounts you are covered for. They will expect to be notified quickly and in some cases before you decide to cancel your holiday so id try calling to make a claim tonight (as they should have out of hours numbers to get it at least registered if you believe it should be covered).

Because it's likely to fall in a black hole between the two.

Travel insurance will likely say there was nothing stopping you from staying on holiday.

Home insurance may well say you chose to come home and the cost of doing so was a "consequential loss" which will most likely be excluded in the terms of the policy. It's not a direct result of the flood damage. You've incurred those costs as a result of your decision to come home, to a place that is uninhabitable anyway.

I'm not saying you made the wrong decision, or that any of us would likely have done anything different. Just want you to be prepared that you may not be able to claim these additional costs back from anyone.

Really you should have contacted insurers before making by plans to return home but I can understand why you didn’t

I would try travel insurance first

Actually, as the home has been rendered uninhabitable, it is very possible that the travel insurer will be able to make a payment in respect of the additional travel costs and possibly the unused portion of the prepaid holiday cost if you have selected insurance that provides cover in respect of a home emergency.

But you'll only be able to know for sure from your policy wording.

Used to deal with the claims. The household insurers being involved with it provided enough evidence of the fact of it happening and the scale of the damage, I just needed proof of the additional costs.