We all know that feeling you get when you’ve booked a holiday and start counting the sleep. But unfortunately, life happens and sometimes you have to cancel.
Make sure you’re protected by adding holiday cancellation cover to your travel insurance. Here's how it works.
Holiday cancellation cover is a type of insurance that protects you against something unexpected happening, either before you set off or during your trip.
It’s included as standard with some travel insurance policies, but not all. As always, check before you take out cover and check your policy documents.
The level of cover provided and the excess you might have to pay also varies widely between insurers and between policies.
For example, we offer:
Admiral | Admiral Gold | Admiral Platinum | |
---|---|---|---|
Cancellation cover | £1,500 | £2,500 | £5,000 |
Also, the higher the level of cover you have, the more the excess reduces too.
We pay up to the policy limits for:
Any successful claim is paid as a lump sum if your trip is cancelled or curtailed (cut short). If it’s the latter, the sum will reflect the remaining days of your holiday that you miss, not the whole holiday.
Things can change at any point between booking and you starting your journey
Some common examples include:
Our holiday cancellation cover also protects you if:
You may also need to cut your holiday short if you need to come home because:
You can’t claim for these if they happened before you took out travel insurance, so we recommend buying holiday cancellation cover soon after you’ve booked your trip.
Our single trip insurance cover begins from the date the policy was issued.
Our annual multi-trip travel insurance cover begins from the date the policy begins.
If you contact us to make a claim, make sure you have evidence of costs incurred, such as unused tickets and receipts. All documents must be sent to us at your own expense.
Here are some things you’ll need for specific cancellation reasons:
If you book a trip that starts after your annual travel insurance policy ends, your only covered up to the policy end date unless you renew the policy on or before the expiry date.
Your policy document will highlight what is and isn’t covered when you book holiday cancellation cover. If you’re unsure of anything, you can contact us.
You can’t claim on holiday cancellation cover if:
Your holiday cancellation cover also might not pay for things like airport taxis and air passenger duty.
And finally, holiday cancellation insurance isn’t the same as cancelling travel insurance. When you take out any insurance policy, you have a ‘cooling off’ period, which lets you change your mind if you decide you no longer need it.
Your rights are in the policy documents we’ll send you.
Read our travel insurance jargon buster to get a better understanding of terms like 'cooling off' which will be in your policy book.