Categories > Domestic Travel

In 2016, the United States National Parks Service is celebrating its 100th birthday with celebrations all across America in some of the best parks and recreation areas found anywhere in the world. Discover some of the most-forgotten yet most-interesting National Parks in the U.S. and some of the amazing activities travelers can experience. 

Additionally, learn what additional travel insurance travelers may need when visiting a specific park. See what National Park activities may require RoamRight's Adventure Plan or Hazardous Sports add-on. 

In a perfect world, travelers might be required to take a test after buying travel insurance, just to be sure they know what they have.  Major misconceptions, leading to disappointment down the line when an inappropriate claim is made and rejected mightbe eliminated…if they could be forced to take that test.  Stop right there, and that strategy is riddled with customer un-friendly problems.  While sellers of travel might want to ensure that travelers understand their coverage, we all know that readingpolicies is about as interesting as watching paint dry.  Still, if those who sell travel protection do a good job of selling it in the first place, understanding comes naturally.

Agents spend a great amount of time tending to existing clients. Indeed, that function is a big part of retaining those clients and the time is well spent. But what about identifying and gaining new clients?  How do agents today grow their business fortomorrow? Word-of-mouth recommendation from happy travelers goes a long way but is limited to a small circle of their friends. Traditional forms of advertising might bring potential clients but the return on that investment is often elusive. Still, thosetraditional methods of engaging existing and potential clients are well defined as opposed to the vast, unknown world of the Internet, social media and blogging, right? Actually, ‘wrong’ is the correct answer, as mainstream business is finding its placein cyberspace.

For many travel agents and tour operators, it seems like offering travel insurance is a postscript – it’s presented as an add-on once the trip is booked. In the same way someone may say: Would you like fries with that?, you can hear it being said: Would you like travel insurance with that?

Trust us – this is not the most effective way to sell travel insurance.

It was not all that long ago that phones were anything but smart.  Simply a device to communicate with others, they were indeed used to call travel agents, airlines, hotels and others to arrange elements of travel. Today, we can and do use smarter phones to do all of the above, often more efficiently than before.

When determining needs for travel insurance, considering the frequency of traveling domestically and internationally is important, for more reasons than one might imagine. It makes sense to cover flight delays and lost luggage regardless of where and when we travel. Cancellation too is important whether traveling by land, air or sea. Still, considering domestic travel as a place to start and then layering appropriate coverage on top of that for international travel makes sense in a number of ways.

The title of this article suggests that there is a perfect time in the selling process for travel agents to recommend buying travel insurance, and indeed there is. But no one formula for success will convert that effort into a sale. That process begins well before the booking even occurs.

To try slipping in “Shall I add the travel insurance?” when gathering required booking details works well for some travel agents. They are happy with their results and see no reason to change what works. But I would almost guarantee you that the percentage of clients taking them up on the offer is far less than agents who make a point of going about the entire topic of travel insurance in a more engaging way.