These days have been busier than ever for Tony Guay, who is a travel agent with Longwood Travel in Wilmington, Massachusetts. He’s doing his best to keep up with demand and a few other things.
"You gotta watch the news. You gotta watch the weather. You gotta watch each destination, because it changes daily," Guay said in between phone calls.
Longwood Travel is still trying to reschedule trips from 2020, most of whom are travelers who purchased trip insurance. Because of the current surge in COVID cases, Guay has a hard time letting families book new travel accommodations without some kind of coverage right now.
"A lot of people don’t realize they need it until they need it," he said.
Michael Giusti, an analyst for InsuranceQuotes.com, has seen a substantial increase in the number of Americans buying trip insurance this year.
"A lot of things we took for granted and thought could never happen all of a sudden, that became a reality," Giusti said.
Some important things to remember about what travel insurance does not cover are you can't cancel a trip out of fear and get a refund and the insurance also doesn't cover government lockdowns.
But one of the biggest reasons to consider travelers insurance right now is the current delta variant surge.
If you are traveling and get COVID-19 abroad and the country you're in doesn't have emergency facilities to treat you, most policies will pay for your medical evacuation back home.
"Insurance is there for the risks that keep you up at night, the things you can’t control," Giusti explained.