Travel insurance - need to claim

Badgeronimous

I have around £1000 worth of booked hotels/ferries that cannot be cancelled.

I'm leaving on holiday in 7 weeks time, I'm self employed, but start a new contract, relocating 300 miles, in 2 weeks time. I have asked if I can get the 2.5wks off, but the answer is no.

To add complication to this, I originally booked this holiday (a driving holiday through Europe) in February, and since then my wife and I have split up, meaning I would of been going alone anyway, or taking a friend.

What options do I have here?

Quentin

Your bookings wont be covered against cancellation because you are choosing to work instead.

comeandgo

How can you be self employed when you need to get permission to take time off? Can no one take your place on the contract? One of the qualifying reasons that the Revenue use is that self employed persons can get anyone else to do the task and the client has no say in it.

ermine

I guess it boils down to will you get greater enhancement of quality fo life by taking the job and the security it delivers for you and eating the £1000 cost or taking the holiday and accepting the loss of that particular contract.

Either way it's not an insurable cost, because you have the choice. Your insurance options are defined in the tedious Ts and Cs that you read carefully when you took out the insurance to make sure it was suitable for your needs, so you will need to look at these again, but I'd be very surprised in you can claim on insurance for an elective decision not to travel.

If you became ill, or a close relative were, then that probably would be an insurable loss, because it's caused by events outside your control. But choosing to take a job instead of going on holiday is up to you, and insuring against people chainging their minds would probably be dearer than the potential risk insured. People change their minds a lot