What are travel advisories? And how do they impact insurance?
The two questions posed in the title of this blog post are queries that any international traveler should be able to provide the correct answer to. If that sounds hyperbolic or overly demanding of casual travelers, too bad. Travel advisories are life or death matters. There's no getting around it.
Now that that's out of the way, let's get to those answers.
What are travel advisories?
Also known as travel alerts or travel warnings, travel advisories are official government warning notices that address the current suitability of a destination for civilian travel. In Canada, they can be found directly on the Travel section of the government's website.
Travel advisories are similar to traffic lights in the sense that they are always indicating a certain action that should be taken. Except instead of a red "stop," a green "go," and yellow "proceed with caution," travel advisories are comprised of the following directives: Exercise normal security precautions, Exercise a high degree of caution, Exercise a high degree of caution (with regional advisories), Avoid non-essential travel, Avoid non-essential travel (with regional advisories), and Avoid all travel.
When a country receives any status other than "Exercise normal security precautions," there are a number of factors that could be prompting that designation. They fall into the broad categories of political instability, disease and sickness, recurrent violence, terrorism, and natural disasters.
How do they impact insurance?
Nearly every travel insurance policy will contain a handful of stipulations regarding travel advisories. Every time a traveler takes out a policy, it's important that he or she knows how that policy's specific insurer will respond to various travel advisory situations.
However, there is a general sort of protocol that most policies follow. Most of the time, one can predict how the insurer will react based on the basic circumstance. For example, if a traveler is already at his or her destination when a serious travel advisory (usually means "Avoid non-essential travel" or worse) is issued by the home country, the insurer will honour the policy as it normally would, provided the traveler makes a proper effort to immediately evacuate the destination country. If that is the case, trip cancellation insurance would kick in and cover the unplanned or rescheduled flight. Same for accident and baggage insurance if circumstances related to the advisory were to prompt their necessity.
If a traveler has purchased a policy for a trip with a particular destination and a serious advisory is issued prior to the date of departure to that destination, then trip cancellation will likely come into effect there and cover those costs as well. Should the traveler decide to go, however, and need to suddenly return home at a later date for reasons relating to the advisory, it is unlikely the insurer will cover trip cancellation. That said, it may cover an accident, baggage loss, or cancellation that was unrelated to the advisory.
Almost always, these matters come down to whether, after a serious advisory was issued, a traveler did his or her due diligence in avoiding the country in question. Most insurers will show very little lenience towards non-compliance in such a situation, so make sure to know the rules and travel within them.