So you think you don’t need holiday home insurance?

Holiday home insurance is imperative even though your holiday home can be for personal use, or you may use a as a rental income for all or part of the year.  The two types of insurance that are required will be different; the holiday home that is rented out to strangers requires higher-level insurance.  This is especially applicable if you have a holiday home not in your immediate area because you may rent a holiday home to four people, but more people turn up.

Holiday home insurance needs to be a step-up from home insurance in most cases because people on holiday behave differently than they do in their normal everyday lives.  It is likely that their behavior may well be excessive in other words they could drink more alcohol than they would normally and excess alcohol leads to more potential accidents.  Alcohol does not necessarily have to be in the equation, people are more relaxed on their holiday and they may take less care with your property than they would their own.

An aspect of holiday home insurance that you may not have considered is the fact that holiday home insurance covers your guests for any injury that they may do to themselves on your property.

There are more variables with holiday home insurance than regular home insurance.  You have no control about how security conscious your guests will be.  Their minds are principally on enjoying the holiday, it may be summer and warm for them it may be unseasonably warm and they may leave the windows open.  They know they may well go out to the day and leave the windows open or balcony doors open.  Despite the fact they wouldn’t dream of doing this at home they will think nothing of this on holiday. If your holiday home is a large resort it may well be that there are people driving around with their eye on the main chance – just looking for a balcony open a crack. In the event of a burglary your guests may lose expensive equipment such as cameras camcorders or even large amounts of money they may want compensation from you for their loss. Quick take out holiday home insurance and cover yourself against these contingencies.

Another security aspect that you may wish to consider is that your guests are may be your future burglars.  How do you know that your guests do not live 10 miles away, they may have rented your holiday home with the express purpose of getting an extra key cut.  They know that when they have left other guests belongings will be easy pickings, if they let themselves into your holiday home they are likely to find cash, credit cards, jewelry and other easily disposable items! Another great reason to pay for holiday home insurance.

Although you are not liable for this type of loss your customer will have lost confidence in you because they’ve had a bad experience and are not likely to want to repeat it.  Not only have you lost customer but they will tell everybody they know what happened to them. It would be impractical to change the locks at the same time as every changeover period; the only way that you can have protection from this type of behavior is to take out adequate holiday home insurance, because your property could be damaged or stolen at the same time.

Another aspect of a holiday home insurance policy that you may not have considered is the fact that all your appliances are strange to your guests; they know how their washing machine works but they don’t know how yours does.  You may have left them 15 pages of detailed instructions but are they likely to read it.  They are more likely to guess how your washing machine works and then damage it later when they can’t up the door than read your carefully prepared instructions.

As a general rule of thumb it is better to be over insured than under-insured in your holiday home because it is not just a holiday home that you are ensuring.  Your guests may be late going out they may call to another to hurry.  That person may be washing their hands and could easily leave the faucet on.  If the plug is in place and you have the potential to flood someone else’s property and bring the ceiling down. So make sure you policy includes complete holiday home contents insurance coverage with little or no exclusions.

If your holiday home is only let for part of the year then the potential for burglaries increases.  There are more risks in the home than in an occupied home.  The risks include bursting pipes, roof damage etc etc. Holiday home insurance policies cover these contingencies; they understand that your holiday home is also an investment.

If you think of it as an investment you will soon realize that searching for cheap holiday home insurance may not always be your best option, it’s important to compare holiday home insurance policies as to the total value you that they provide you and not just the bottom line price. If you do so I’m sure you’ll make wise decisions and protect your assets and investment.