More travelers are expected to buy travel insurance in 2019, especially younger travelers ages 25 to 44.
The Berkshire Hathaway Travel Protection's annual State of Travel Insurance research report uncovered a lot of interesting insight into travel insurance.
For instance, they project that travel insurance sales to Americans who travel within the U.S. will increase by 4.07% in 2019 and will increase by 3.96% for Americans traveling internationally.
The research found that Americans traveled less in 2018 than 2017 from 3.0 to 2.9 trips per year. However, they're spending more money on extensive trips or due to the rising costs of airfare and gas, and thus, are drawn to buy travel insurance.
The biggest takeaway from the research is that younger travelers are the best market for buying travel insurance.
For one, the younger the traveler, the likelier they are to buy travel insurance in 2019 than in 2018. The report also found that 33% of Millenials with children are planning to purchase travel insurance in 2019 while 29% of Boomers plan to buy less travel insurance.
Younger travelers prefer tech-driven and customizable travel insurance with 43% saying they'd buy more travel insurance if it could be customized compared to 21% of older travelers.
The report stresses how ripe of a market young travelers are and how companies are not providing them with the service or travel insurance they want:
"While some carriers have pushed ahead on the technology front, no carrier has rolled out a product that checks all of younger travelers' boxes. The 25-44-year-old market is more diverse than previous markets; they make travel-related purchases differently than earlier generations, and they look for different things from travel insurance," the report stated.
"It's hard to say how much revenue insurers are leaving on the table by not creating products that meet younger travelers' needs; at this point, no carrier is at a competitive disadvantage, since no one has a true new-generation product on the market. This remains an unexploited opportunity."
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