Understanding Personal Liabilities in Terms of Family Holiday Insurance

It’s a fair bet that if you ask anyone about the cover provided by family holiday insurance the main areas they highlight are likely to be things like these listed below.

• Health cover to top up the protection provided by an EHIC for a family in countries where emergency health care provision is not as comprehensive as the UK equivalent.
• Travel delays – where you suffer serious inconvenience and may need to fund temporary accommodation etc.
• Lost or stolen baggage – to provide funds to replace essential items until such time as your baggage is recovered.
• Cancellations – where you have had to cancel your holiday due to the death or illness of a close family member or perhaps from being made redundant.

These certainly are all very important reasons why family holiday insurance should be something that you would not consider leaving to chance when planning your holiday. There is another area, though, where this type of cover can provide vital protection for you, and that's in situations where you or a member of your family causes serious injury to another person or damage to their property. If the injured third party decides that you or members of your group are to blame for their predicament, they may decide to sue you for damages.

If their claim results in a decision in their favour, you could be left with the prospect of finding a substantial sum of money to settle the award against you. You may also be required to fund their costs and expenses, as well as any that you may have incurred defending the claim. As many people may be all too well aware, modern society seems to be becoming extremely litigious, and family holiday insurance policies that can provide six figure sums of financial protection in these circumstances are not unusual.

If you are in the fortunate position of being able to benefit from more than one holiday per year, having cover is all the more important. That doesn’t necessarily mean though that you have to go through the process of purchasing a new policy on each occasion. In addition to a single trip policy, many providers of this type of cover will also offer an annual option, saving you both time and effort. You may also find that an annual policy may be a more cost effective option than buying individual policies as and when you need them.

Over recent years there has been a major increase in the number of people arranging their own holidays as opposed to going to a travel agent and getting everything done for them. One consequence of this is the inclination to regard family holiday insurance as an option that can be sacrificed to save a bit of money. That is definitely a false economy: you need cover, end of story!

Patrick Chong is the Managing Director of Insuremore. We provide low cost travel insurance and offer a range of policies including family holiday insurance, annual, multi-trip and single-trip insurance. For all your travel cover needs, Insuremore can help you in the quickest and most cost-efficient way.

Writer and Online Marketing Manager in London.