'Have you got right cover?' asks Grantham dog walker Sara Barnes - 09 April 2023

With many of us starting to look forward to getting away either for a late Easter break or summer holiday, take some time to check what your travel and pet care insurance will cover in relation to care for your pets.

Having investigated this myself recently, I was interested to find that many travel insurance companies will not cover the cost of your pet care should your holiday get cancelled and you lose your deposit. I only managed to find a couple that would cover this, but it was an additional add-on that had to be requested – it was not part of the standard cover. Most wouldn’t even cover this at all.

So what, you might think, I have pet insurance! Again, having spoken to several pet insurance companies; they would only pay out for cancelled pet accommodation, if the reason for the cancellation was related to the dog’s health and, in many instances, they would not cover you unless the dog was due to be travelling with you as well.

You may want to argue that the pet care provider, I’m thinking here home boarder or kennels, should return your deposit. In many instances these are non-refundable. The reason for this being these establishments have limited numbers that they can accommodate, and if they were to return every deposit every time a holiday got cancelled, they would not be able to afford to operate and therefore would not be there for customers and future customers to use when they go on holiday.

Depending on the circumstances, some may refund part of the deposit if they manage to fill the spaces or may depending on the circumstances carry over to a future booking. This is at the discretion of the pet care provider, and what it states in their terms and conditions.

So why am I writing an article on this? Simply I want to highlight where there appears to be a gap in most pet owners insurance cover when it comes to cancelled holidays and the recovery of the costs of any pet care lost due to the cancellation.

It might also be worth for most people, checking what is the holiday or travel insurance will cover should they get delayed returning from their holiday either due to strikes, cancelled flights, Covid, or any other number of natural or man-made disasters.

A quick call to both insurance companies (travel/holiday and pet) should clarify where you stand going forward.