What happens to your travel investment if the B&B where you had reservations is destroyed by fire?
We decided to look into this scenario to find out how travelers can protect themselves. Remember, if you’ve planned a B&B stay, your trip may involve flight costs as well as other pre-paid trip costs, which may or may not be able to be cancelled for a refund. So, when we are speaking about one portion of your trip being destroyed by a fire, i.e., the bed and breakfast, it’s important to recognize that there are other trip costs covered by your trip cancellation coverage.
To start, we researched to find a plan with trip cancellation that included fire in the description of coverage. We quickly found that trip cancellation with Worldwide Trip Protector Gold from Travel Insured International is allowed in this instance:
Natural Disaster at the site of Your destination which renders Your destination accommodations uninhabitable.
… and we further read into the policy definitions to ensure that ‘natural disaster’ included fire and found:
“Natural Disaster†means flood, fire, hurricane, tornado, earthquake, volcanic eruption, blizzard or avalanche that is due to natural causes.
So, at least this plan would allow you to cancel your entire trip in the instance your destination B&B is destroyed – and rendered unhabitable – by a fire.
A word of caution: if the innkeeper gives you a refund for your payment, that amount will be taken out of the amount reimbursed by your travel insurance company, which makes sense. Â In many cases, the innkeeper can re-book your stay with a partner inn, and in that case you will not have a covered reason to cancel your trip.
The plan we discussed here is just one plan with this type of coverage. There are many other travel insurance plans that will cover your trip costs if you have to cancel your travel plans due to an inn fire, so if that type of protection is important to you, it’s crucial that you carefully review the description of coverage and remember that the destination lodging must be rendered uninhabitable.
See a full review of bed and breakfast or inn travel insurance.
