West Sussex travel agent to offer coronavirus and pandemic insurance

A travel agent with branches across West Sussex has offered travel insurance with coronavirus and pandemic cover.
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Hays Travel, the UK's largest indepedendent travel agent which rescued Thomas Cook's shops six months ago, has added covid-19 and pandemic protection to its comprehensive insurance as standard.

The new cover will explicitly cover cancellations or curtailment of the holiday, emergency medical expenses and repatriation 'following diagnosis of covid-19 or any disease classed as an epidemic or pandemic'.

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It also covers cruise holidays where travellers are confined to their cabins or lose out on port stops and prepaid excursions because of pandemics.

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“As people are beginning to book their holidays again we wanted to give them real confidence that if they are affected by covid-19, they will not lose out financially, which would be one thing less to worry about should the worst happen,” said John Hays, managing director and co-owner of Hays Travel.

“We have worked hard with our partners to put together insurance cover that answers the concerns that many of our customers naturally have as we gradually emerge from the lockdown.”

The cover provided means customers or their travelling companion, immediate family or business associate, or someone they were going to stay with, are diagnosed with Covid-19 before they travel, and are required to isolate or be in quarantine, will be able to cancel and claim back the full cost of their holiday. This applies to holidays in the UK as well as travel abroad.

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It will also pay for emergency medical and associated expenses and the costs of getting home if a customer or their travelling companion becomes ill with covid-19 or is subjected to compulsory quarantine.

“We are now including explicit references to being diagnosed with an epidemic or pandemic disease such as Covid-19 as standard with all travel insurance policies. We have ensured there is cover for all permutations we can think of, because we want our customers to go on holiday whether home or abroad and feel secure about the cover they’ve got,” added John.

“We’ve been doing all we can to give customers confidence and get the travel industry bouncing back. Introducing this new insurance cover for everyone is another step forward. We have also introduced our Peace of Mind Guarantee, which on certain holidays means you can cancel or change free of charge for any reason, up to six weeks before you travel.”

Hays Travel customers who have already booked their holiday can still take out the insurance before they travel and those who have existing insurance can upgrade to give them the additional Covid-19 cover.

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Hays retained the majority of its 3,000 retail staff working from home during lockdown to continue to serve customers concerned about cancellations and refunds. The company has now re-opened the majority of its 650 branches around the UK and with the lifting of travel restrictions many customers are now booking holidays for later this year or 2021.

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