CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — You may have heard of one of the big trends in post-lockdown travel. It's called revenge travel.
With COVID-19 forcing many people to cancel their trips and put their plans on hold, many are now making up for lost time as the world begins to open back up again.
Erika Martinez and her family share some last goodbyes at Corpus Christi International Airport just moments before grandpa and little Gabbie fly off to California for a month.
“I still want to go places but with covid going around, I've been not wanting to fly,” says Martinez, mother of four.
Martinez is like many others, though at the same time, plenty of travelers are taking to the skies as part of a trend known as revenge travel.
“Revenge travel is essentially this pent-up demand of people wanting to travel,” says Omar Kaywan, co-founder of Goose Insurance, a company with an app where you can buy practically any insurance, including travel insurance. “Regardless of the latest variants or the sub-variants or whatever we're dealing with, people are more inclined to travel.”
It’s all about travelers taking revenge on COVID-19. Kaywan telling us that pre-pandemic, 6% of Americans traveling internationally (roughly 100 million trips) bought travel insurance. These days, he says, more than four times that or 28% of Americans are considering and or buying travel insurance, that’s when it comes to international travel.
But why is buying travel insurance so important?
Kaywan says when traveling outside of your health network or outside of the U.S., you don't necessarily have coverage, but that’s not all.
"A lot of countries are now requiring you to show proof of adequate travel medical insurance for you to get in there, so it's almost like having a visa almost,” Kaywan says.
These days, there’s COVID-19 insurance covering medical emergencies, quarantine benefits, trip cancellations or interruptions, all due to COVID-19.
"We should be looking at for sure, trip protection if that's important to you, but more important is your actual health and making sure that you're financially protecting yourself while traveling abroad,” Kaywan says, especially with the number of Americans with pre-existing health conditions.
So how much is this going to cost? For a 10-14 day trip, Kaywan says roughly $30-50.
When it comes to COVID-19 insurance? Kaywan says roughly $175 for the entire year.
As for Erika Martinez, she says travel insurance is a “waste of money” and like so many, "I want the cheapest fare possible. I don't want to pay that extra for travel insurance. Even if it might mean helping you out in the end? Yeah, I still want the cheapest flight.”
And if you plan on some revenge travel of your own, it’s important to remember that traveling in the pandemic era is more complicated with COVID-19 testing before and after arriving, quarantining while waiting for your results, as well as showing proof of vaccination.
One wrong move and your trip could be ruined. That’s why some experts recommend using a travel agent or travel company that can make sure you know what you're getting into even before you plan your revenge travel.
