Australian travel insurance company, Cover-More, has confirmed that customers with a trip to Lombok planned (who took out a policy before August 5) are covered if they choose to cancel or rearrange their travel plans.
Cover-More’s Executive General Manager, Sales & Distribution, Michael Stein said he supported DFAT’s advice to travellers to avoid travel to Lombok and its surrounding islands following last week’s serious earthquakes.
“Our first priority has been to ensure the safety of our travellers who were on Lombok or the Gili Islands and to help them travel out of the region as soon as they could,” he said.
Mike Stein
“Since the first earthquake on 5 August, we have been encouraging our customers who were planning travel to the area to rebook or rearrange their travel.”
Cover-More Executive General Manager, Sales & Distribution, Michael Stein
Lombok and the surrounding areas have been considered a disaster zone since last Sunday.
With this in mind, Michael said his ‘do not travel’ advice was two fold: to keep customers who are planning travel to Lombok safe and to enable insurance providers and emergency services to do their jobs and help the people in the area.
“This is also essential to enable local services to focus on recovery efforts, something that is now more urgent following Thursday’s serious aftershock,” he said.
Cover-More said as a travel insurance provider, one of their important roles is to evacuate travellers when world events and natural disasters happen and get them out of harm’s way.
“We have contacted each of our customers in the region and we have been actively liaising with them, as well as local authorities and services, so that we kept our travellers safe and we can assist local remediation efforts,” Michael said.
Those with policies issued prior to 5 August 2018 can claim for benefits provided by their policy and claims will be assessed in accordance with their Product Disclosure Statement.
Image: AAP
Cover-More said customers who have travel planned to Lombok or the surrounding islands should talk to their Travel Agent or transport provider as soon as possible.
For further information clients can visit covermore.com.au for the company’s Lombok earthquake advisory.
They should also visit smartraveller.gov.au for DFAT’s Lombok advisory, which is updated regularly.
- READ: Yet another strong earthquake shakes Lombok
- READ: Tourists are being urged not to travel to Lombok