Insurance was only added two years ago as an option on the Travel Industry Survey's list of products that agents expect to sell more of, and it's already topped that list twice. This year, 67% of agents said they intend to sell more travel insurance, edging out ocean cruises (66%), and up four percentage points over last year's survey. Senior editor Jamie Biesiada talked with Virtuoso's Steve Wooster, managing director of services and air operations, about why insurance is such a hot product.
Q: Why are agents doing so well selling insurance?
Steve Wooster
A: One of the biggest [reasons] is just the fact that more people are taking vacations.
The other major driver is that the advisers tend to be more vigilant about offering the solution, and they are more educated themselves now to be able to have an intelligent conversation about the difference between what my credit card provider might provide, what the cruise line might provide or the tour organization might provide and what a third-party type of an insurance product might provide to ensure that they're giving the right kind of information.
Q: Most insurance companies are doing well now, reporting year-over-year increases. Why is that?
A: You have a world now that requires you to be a little bit more educated. So if you're going into an area that might be prone to natural disasters, or if you're traveling and you know that you might have a particular condition or you just want to make sure that you're protecting your investment, most of the consumers, the travelers themselves, are taking the time to do the research and make sure they understand what their options are.
Q: To what would you attribute that increased awareness? Is it coming from the insurers, the agents, all of the above?
A: A bit of all of the above, honestly. I think you have advisers who are more educated now. I think some of it comes down to some of the duty-to-care and duty-to-warn regulations that exist in the marketplace today, because [agents] want to make sure that they've got the right information to give to their clients. I think some of it is just [agents] needing to, because that's the state of the world, to be more educated on what's going on.
And then you have the insurance companies that are doing a much better job of being a little bit more flexible in building programs that are going to be applicable to the type of traveler they have, so you're not really in a one-size-fits-all. There's a little bit of variance there with how some of those plans and programs can pull together.
Q: Do most Virtuoso advisers offer insurance?
A: Absolutely. One of our big tenets on our side is ensuring the adviser community is educated. We really do try to do our best to focus on ensuring that they have the best information available so that they can provide that information to their clients.
Q: Agents are increasingly optimistic about insurance sales in the future. Do you share in that optimism?
A: We absolutely do. The continued increase that we've seen year over year with both the volume and the hands-on knowledge and education from both the travel adviser and from the travelers themselves, I think, only sets the stage for that increase to continue.