With hurricanes likely, insurance can be a smart idea

IT’S deja vu time for travelers.

In a Travel Insider column in June 2005, I wrote, “If the forecasters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are right, an ill wind will be blowing this hurricane season -- in fact, lots of ill winds.” How right they were. Last hurricane season, which began June 1 and ran through Nov. 30, was the most active Atlantic tropical storm season on record -- 28 named storms, including 15 hurricanes.

This season begins with another dire prediction. Last month, the prognosticators at NOAA forecast an above-average storm season, though they are not yet saying it will be as bad as last year. For 2006, the agency predicts more than a dozen named storms and thinks as many as 10 of those will become hurricanes. (It predicted seven to nine hurricanes for 2005. The average is 11 named storms and six hurricanes, according to NOAA.)

So with more hurricanes predicted, could this be another record breaker?

“The main uncertainty in this outlook is not whether the season will be above normal, but how much above normal it will be,” NOAA said in its forecast on its website (www.noaa.gov). “The 2006 season could become the fourth hyperactive season in a row.”

For summer travelers to hurricane-prone regions, including the Caribbean, Florida and parts of the East Coast, this presents challenges and some opportunities.

Lezlie Holden of Holt, Mich., discovered firsthand the kind of havoc a hurricane can wreak on a vacation. She and eight family members were in Cancun, Mexico, in October for a wedding when Hurricane Wilma roared to shore. The family managed to hold the wedding, though not at the romantic beach where it was planned. Instead, vows were exchanged in a bar.

“Immediately following the wedding, we were told to get together what belongings we could,” Holden said.

Still unnerved by the images of post-Katrina New Orleans, Holden decided against going to the local shelter and instead hired a van to drive the whole party to Merida, about four hours away. Just as the van was ready to roll, her mother fell and broke her hip. Holden’s sister stayed behind with their mother, and the rest of the group went on to Merida.

It was Holden’s first trip outside the U.S., and she’d had the foresight to purchase travel insurance. Travel Guard, the insurer, helped with evacuation arrangements and even tried to help contact her mother and sister, who had become separated. It provided Spanish speakers by phone to assist Holden and helped find an air ambulance company to fly her mother home. (Her mother did not have travel insurance and ended up with a $49,000 bill that other insurance ultimately covered.)

“They went out of their way to make sure everybody in our entire party was taken care of,” Holden said.

That was one of hundreds of cases that the travel insurance industry dealt with in 2005.

“If you combined Katrina and Wilma, we had as many claims as we’ve ever had from a single event,” said Dan McGinnity, spokesman for Travel Guard International. “It was 9/11-esque in the number of claims filed.”

Travelers can buy travel insurance from travel agents, online and at traditional locations, or shop online for different policies. InsureMyTrip.com can compare quotes on more than 100 policies from 16 insurers. Not all policies are created equal.

Typically, the cost of the policy is determined by the cost of the trip, the age of the travelers and the problems covered. For some insurers, destination and length of trip also are considerations.

Not all travel insurance covers a situation in which a destination becomes uninhabitable, an important consideration for hurricane season. CSA Travel Protection, Travel Guard and Travelex are the only companies that will cover your decision not to go, for example, if a hurricane destroys your hotel but you can still get there, said Peter Evans, executive vice president of InsureMyTrip.com.

“Infrastructure is usually the first thing to be restored,” he said.

Industry experts advise buying insurance early. You get extra coverage when you buy it within 15 to 21 days of your deposit, depending on the insurer. If you wait until a hurricane is bearing down on you, you’re too late.

“Insurance is designed to cover unforeseen circumstances,” McGinnity said. “Once you know when and where [a storm is] going to hit, it’s no longer unforeseen.”

With all the coverage of last year’s hurricanes and this year’s grim prediction, business is slow at some destinations potentially in harm’s way. That can result in bargains.

“This year, for whatever reason, there is some weakness in Caribbean booking,” said Tim Gallagher, a spokesman for Carnival Cruise Lines, which had to reroute three ships and delay seven others because of storms.

“We can only make best guesses at it, but we do believe that last year’s very active hurricane season has had an impact on people’s willingness to plan trips to the Caribbean during the summer.”

To spur business, Carnival is offering up to 20% off on some cruises on its 16 ships in the Caribbean this summer and fall. A four-day Western Caribbean cruise on the Inspiration for an inside cabin departing Aug. 24 was priced recently at $279, compared with $449 for June. (This fare may no longer be available.)

In Cancun, the visitors bureau is predicting that 22,000 out of nearly 28,000 hotel rooms will be open by summer. The Ritz-Carlton Cancun, destroyed by Hurricane Wilma, is to reopen midsummer, said spokeswoman Vivian Deuschl. I priced a week at the end of September and found a brochure rate of $299 a night, which hardly seemed like a deal until I priced the same room in January at $569.

“I don’t know if I’d call them deals,” said Deuschl. “I’d term them good values.”

But no matter the deals and the insurance protection, one traveler has had enough of hurricanes. Says Lezlie Holden, who ultimately managed to get her family back to Michigan after the wild wedding, “I’m taking a trip to Minnesota to the Mall of America.”

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James Gilden can be contacted at james.gilden@latimes.com. E-mail Travel Insider at travel @latimes.com.