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My husband and I had a trip planned for two weeks in Ireland. We were supposed to depart right about now from Dulles airport for Dublin.
Unfortunately we returned from our Emergency family trip to Salt Lake City on Wednesday afternoon only to have to rush my husband to the emergency room about 12 hours later in the wee hours of Thursday morning. They admitted him Thursday morning due to a large kidney stone. Yesterday morning they put in a stent and did lithotripsy to break up the stone. The doctor advised him he could not travel for several days. He was just released from the hospital this afternoon.
We are still going to Ireland and I’ve managed to salvage most of our itinerary. I had to completely cancel the first Airbnb booking in Kenmare for four nights. The second and third bookings did not need altering. The fourth booking we were able to keep by changing the dates. So we only ended up having to cancel the first booking only.
I took the precaution this trip of purchasing the insurance offered through Airbnb for each of those stays. The insurance for the stay I canceled cost $46.95. If they honor my claim, which I have already submitted, we should get a refund of $751.12.
We shall see. I will keep you all updated on how it goes. I’m curious to see how many hoops they will make us jump through and how long the refund takes. According to what I’ve read in the policy this should be a pretty cut and dried case and covered under the policy terms.
“To better support guests and Hosts, we’ve partnered with Aon and Europ Assistance Group and its U.S. subsidiary, Generali Global Assistance, to introduce travel insurance for guests.”
Hopefully this isn’t something like AirCover, where you have to run the gaunlet of Airbnb CS to make a claim.
However, I looked up these companies and they do not bill themselves as insurers, but as “travel assistance” companies, so maybe Airbnb is going to have to first approve the claim. In other words, it would appear that you won’t dealing directly with an insurance company.
From Generali’s website:
“Make money and help protect your guests by selling vacation rental insurance. For more than 25 years, CSA Travel Protection-Generali Global Assistance has led the industry—helping our partners generate revenue and improve guest satisfaction with full-service Vacation Rental Damage Protection and Travel Insurance programs.”
Do let us know and glad your husband is on the mend.
We made the claim direct through Generali’s website. AirBnB doesn’t appear to be involved at all, other than collecting the money for the policy.
We cancelled the stay on AirBnB, I messaged the host the reason and our regrets, and told her I had travel insurance so no need to worry about me asking for any kind of refund (I would not have even if we didn’t have insurance).
We sent copies of the documentation on his medical issue and hospital stay to Generali. We shall see if they ask for more and how long the process takes.
UPDATE: Well, we don’t have Zelle so that means downloading yet another app I’ll probably only use once…but so far it’s promising. We just made the claim on Saturday.
