If there is one word that describes our current status, it is uncertainty. It is common behaviour to doubt and feel uncertain of one or many things
happening in our life, but recently uncertainty has expanded to cover every single aspect happening in our lives. If you zoom into the several things that I’m interested in, you would find travel
magnified among them. However, now it’s surrounded by uncertainty and this effect has led me to change my sales perspective. Since the pandemic, we are in a learning curve state trying exhaustively to control what is going on around us. Earlier, cross-selling was a tool that we used in order to maximize our profits and certainly respond to the market needs. Majorly, travel insurance was one of those tools. It became a requirement for major visa applications and passengers were requesting it. Even if they don’t ask for it, we learnt to remind them of it. We
made the world uncertain and we created the ‘what if’ unknowing and even not necessarily believing in its power. We believed in the profit return it would generate. Today, I can tell you that the 20$ COVID plus policy that my passenger willingly did before his trip to Dubai is saving him from THOUSANDS of DOLLAR bills. The unfortunate happened and the uncertain revealed itself. To cut the story short, I cross-selled and gave my passenger the travel insurance that covers COVID before his trip to Angola with a stopover in Dubai. Unluckily, while he’s in Dubai, he was tested positive and required immediate hospitalization. His health situation was extremely critical and he was called an ambulance before contacting SIA call center, being his insurer. He was then dropped off at the closest hospital which was also not within the network of the insurance company. His family had to call me as he was unreachable to get his policy number and other information. I was able to
coordinate with SIA Beirut team and the operations department. The patient was admitted to the hospital, well taken care of and covered completely by SIA. To sum it up, I deeply believe that sometimes we underestimate the power of travel insurance and its potential importance in lessening our travel uncertainties. Today, I can tell you that travel might have dropped sharply, but if you travel do it safely. Moving forward, we shall re-learn how to travel during the pandemic. We need to be more diligent in order to protect ourselves and our loved ones.