Everyone needs a vacation once in a while to get a break from routine life, to recharge, to explore different places, or just to relax with a delicious mixed drink in their hand.

Traditionally, people fly to their preferred destination and stay in a hotel. That is still how most people prefer to go on a vacation.

Staying in a hotel provides a certain structure to your vacation such as housekeeping, room service (in room dining), and depending upon the hotel, various additional services such as valet parking, laundry service, breakfast buffet, massage and spa, and an endless list of other services.

However, staying in a hotel may not be ideal for everyone. Many people rent a vacation home which offers advantages that a hotel room simply can’t accommodate. Therefore, it is no surprise that vacation rentals are now a huge $100 billion plus industry.

Typically, when you are traveling with your family, sometimes an extended family, or even group of friends, you would prefer a larger space and more privacy. You may not want the crowded, shared space of larger hotels. Renting a vacation home would also allow you to take your pet with you as they would have a lot more freedom to roam around. If you are having a family reunion of 20 or 30 people, it may not be most efficient to rent 10 to 15 rooms at a hotel. Instead, you can just rent a large vacation home with numerous bedrooms and bathrooms. Of course, in such vacation home rental, you would usually be responsible for cleaning the place, doing your own laundry, dishes, etc.

Some places in the U.S. that are very famous for vacation rental homes are outer banks in North Carolina, Cape Cod in Massachusetts, and Myrtle Beach in South Carolina.

In the old days, the primary method to book a vacation rental home would be to look through yellow pages or even look at the sign in front of the home and call the owner. However, now a days, there are specialized websites such as HomeAway, Airbnb and more where you can rent either the entire home or a mansion, or just a room. There are also specialized websites such as One Fine Stay that cater to higher end customers.

COVID-19 Pandemic Era

Apart from other advantages listed above, more and more people are choosing to do a vacation home rental to stay away from the crowds by renting an entire property for themselves. It is very important to maintain social distancing from others to avoid the chance of getting infected with COVID-19. If you stay in a large hotel or resort, it may be very difficult to avoid getting close to strangers.

You should make sure that the vacation home you will be renting is getting thoroughly sanitized between every guest rental. Sometimes, the owner may not do back to back booking and keep at least one day gap between rentals to allow sufficient time for sanitizing. In any case, for your own safety, it is a good idea to do additional sanitization yourself in your rental property as soon as you get there.

Vacation Rental Risks and Insurance

When renting a vacation home, a non-refundable deposit is always required. Many times, you are required to pay the entire amount upfront and can be nonrefundable.

Does travel insurance cover vacation rentals? Well, if you were to get unexpectedly sick or for other covered reasons, trip cancellation insurance would provide the coverage for your non-refundable trip costs. You would need to provide the insurance claims department proof of the reason to make a claim. For example, if you are cancelling the trip because you are sick enough that you can’t travel, you will need a certificate from your physician stating so.

It is also possible that before you go on your trip, the vacation home you rented might get damaged or destroyed in a fire or storm. The owner of the property would have the homeowner’s insurance to cover the damage to the property. However, that would not provide any coverage for your vacation rental payments. In such cases, travel insurance plan can provide you the coverage for your non-refundable, prepaid trip costs.

There are several other reasons for which you may be able to cancel your trip and recover costs under travel insurance such as fire, an unforeseen major weather event, being called for jury duty, and so on.

To claim under travel insurance, you would need to formally cancel your trip. You will need to get the proof from the vacation home owner that you have cancelled your booking with, the copy of the contract and what the penalties are for cancelling.

Medical Coverage When Renting a Vacation Home

Apart from the need for trip cancellation and trip interruption while vacationing in a rental home, you should consider whether you need emergency medical coverage. If you are traveling domestically, your regular health insurance may or may not provide you out of network coverage. Even if it does, you may be subject to higher deductible, coinsurance, and out of pocket medical expenses. If you are traveling internationally, your domestic health insurance probably will not provide any emergency medical coverage abroad. Therefore, you should consider purchasing travel insurance that includes a decent amount of emergency medical coverage when vacationing in a rental property away from home.

Uncovered Reasons

While travel insurance provides excellent coverage for many covered reasons, there are many reasons for which you can’t make a claim.

Booking a rental home with an individual owner may sometimes be less reliable than staying in an established hotel chain. For example, the accommodations may be a lot smaller than advertised, or they are different, are not good enough or lack quality, not so close to the beach but a few miles away and so on. It is also possible that you get totally scammed. Unfortunately, these are not covered reasons for trip cancellation claim.

Normally, in cancel for any reason travel insurance, you can cancel for your trip due to any reason or no reason. However, you are required to cancel your trip at least two days before your scheduled trip start date; in such cases, you would come to know about the problems with your rental only after reaching the destination. Therefore, even cancel for any reason insurance is not helpful. It is worthwhile to note that some cancel for any reason travel insurance also come with trip interruption for any reason, if you want to utilize that. But it would be up to the traveler to continue their trip or abandon it altogether and head out.

Additionally, fear of traveling, government or border shutdowns, unable to reach to your destination, beach closures, etc. are not covered reasons under regular trip cancellation insurance.

Buying Travel Insurance

Just like how most people now a days don’t book a rental home property by directly calling the owner, but visiting a website, comparing different properties and doing a proper research, you should apply the same technique while shopping for travel insurance.

On this website, you can get instant quotes from multiple travel insurance plans, compare them side by side, and make an instant purchase online. If you have any questions for your specific needs, you can contact us and we would be glad to offer you the plan that is most suitable for you.