Travel insurance: What you should know before plan

58 per cent of UAE residents don't purchase travel insurance at all.

With the holiday season upon us, countless families across the UAE are gearing up for a saunter off home to indulge in a little winter cheer with old friends and family. And certainly, if you've one or two kids, it can be a big job organising a simple hop home.
You'll have obviously booked your flights months ago to avoid the expensive air fares that are characteristic of leaving the UAE in December. You'll probably have a car sorted at the other end, and accommodation was planned well in advance. Warm clothes for the kids need to be sorted if you're heading to colder climes, and that comes before working out which kids get iPad and iPhone rights for the journey. The pets are booked into kennels, and all that's left is book the Careem car that'll take you to the airport.
Or is it? What about travel insurance? That's always an after-thought, and, all too often, it gets forgotten about altogether. "What could really go wrong?" People think to themselves (I certainly have), and, to be honest, the majority of the time, nothing does go wrong. Family trips home often work like a well-oiled machine, meaning there's little call to get yourself covered.
That's the assumption, anyway. But I'm afraid the statistics beg to differ. An interesting survey on travel insurance came out earlier in the year, and it found that 80 per cent of travellers have experienced some sort of travel-related incident. What's more, one in six people end up having to make a claim on their travel insurance policies. Flight delays tend to be the biggest reason, followed by illness and trip postponement.
So, roughly speaking, if you do take out travel insurance, there's a one-in-six chance that you'll end up having to claim on it. It's not ideal, thinking about issues that could come up during your perfectly planned trip, but unfortunately things sometimes just happen. And in that situation, you want to be covered - whether it's for overseas medical bills, emergency hotel bookings or last-minute flight changes.
I won't bore you with reasons to get covered when you're travelling - everyone knows that travel insurance comes at a tiny fraction of the cost of a trip abroad, and everyone knows that it offers a helping hand should things go wrong on holiday. What I do want to get across, however, is that it seems like UAE residents are waking up to the peace of mind that travel insurance affords.
Our website data recently revealed that there was a 291 per cent increase in searches for travel insurance between October and November this year. Obviously, we'd expected an uptick as we get closer to the holiday season, but the rise was pretty startling, even for us. It appears that UAE residents are taking the statistics on board, and are willing to add getting covered to their holiday checklists.
A YouGov survey earlier in the year found that 58 per cent of UAE residents don't purchase travel insurance at all. Hopefully, with finance comparison sites now offering travel insurance, making it easier than ever to get covered, that number will be much smaller as we head into the New Year.
 The writer is the CEO of compareit4me.com. Views expressed by him are his own and do not reflect the newspaper's policy.