John Noel, CEO of Travel Guard International
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}This is a partial transcript from Your World with Neil Cavuto, November 6, 2001.
NEIL CAVUTO: My next guest is here to talk about what may ease your trip planning jitters and get you ready. Joining me now is, John Noel, CEO of Travel Guard International. Mr. Noel, thank you for coming.
JOHN NOEL, CEO, TRAVEL GUARD INTERNATIONAL: Thank you.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}CAVUTO: Do you need travel insurance?
NOEL: Absolutely. Any one that's traveling should buy insurance, not just for the insurance side, but also for the emergency assistance side, the kind of 9-1-1 when they are traveling.
CAVUTO: But if I have life insurance, extended personal insurance, doesn't that cover it.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}NOEL: Absolutely not. What you are look is trip cancellation coverage, trip interruption coverage, people who pay $5,000 - $10,000 for trips. They have to cancel their trips, as per what happened with September 11. We actually covered thousands and thousands of people to cancel their trips just out of fear.
CAVUTO: How did you cover that without going under?
NOEL: Well, absolutely. We covered it and it is of course, reinsured throughout the world.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}CAVUTO: All right, we should go over what type of stuff is generally covered with this sort of thing, what insurance generally covers for you. One is any trip cancellation or interruption, but there are provisos with that, right?
NOEL: Absolutely. And really, people need to be careful what type of insurance they buy, who they buy it from and what they need to do is look for all of the things that really we're concerned about right now. Is it covered for trip cancellation in the event of a terrorist attack or in the event of a financial bankruptcy or default of...
CAVUTO: There has got to be a good reason. You just can't say, I don't feel like going to Alaska.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}NOEL: Or, my pet cat died...
NOEL: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) be, hey, this trip is really expensive. I don't want to do it, that won't work.
NOEL: No, that won't work. No, it has to be a covered reason.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}CAVUTO: Another one is serious illness or emergency.
NOEL: Serious illness of the insured or about 16 different relatives including father in law, brother-in-law, niece, nephew those kinds of things.
CAVUTO: What is the family lineage on that?
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}NOEL: It is fairly broad. It goes into stepson, stepdaughter, and as far as we possibly can to provide the broadest coverage that we can possibly cover.
CAVUTO: OK, so not like bookie, or anything like that?
NOEL: Not your business partner.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}CAVUTO: Lost, stolen or damaged baggage: That is a big issue these days because it takes so long for people to get their luggage, if they get it.
NOEL: Well, we do two things. We actually cover the individual who actually loses their bag, and they have to get reimbursed. But the other thing we do is watch the bags. We have bag trackers, and we give customers numbers with ID numbers on and we actually track baggage and help them find it when they are in a location anyplace in the world and they don't speak the local language, we go in and help them find their bags.
CAVUTO: Let me ask you this, a lot of major credit card companies like Visa, American Express offer travel insurance, that sort of thing. Is that done through you, or is that separate from you?
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}NOEL: We work with a lot of the credit card companies, we help them with a lot of their programs, especially in the area of medical emergency assistance, we are one of the largest providers of that kind of service.
The credit card companies offer coverage primarily for life insurance. They don't go in to coverage for trip cancellation, trip interruption. They do offer some baggage, but the important thing on the baggage issue is to have coverage for mysterious disappearance on...
CAVUTO: Now, this costs about how much for a typical flight?
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}NOEL: Between 4 percent and 7 percent of the trip cost, is the average cost of insurance.
CAVUTO: So a $10,000 trip, a real big trip, you are doing, it would be up to $700.
NOEL: Up to $700. That is correct.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}CAVUTO: And for that you get peace of mind?
NOEL: Absolutely.
CAVUTO: You hope. All right, John Noel, president and CEO of Travel Guard International.
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