Businesses can offer travel insurance as an employee benefit. Usually, this insurance will cover the risks associated with travelling for businesses purposes, which can provide essential security if your employees regularly travel as part of their work.

Yet some employees expand their business travel insurance to cover leisure travel. This means that an employee’s workplace travel insurance scheme can extend to covering their family holidays, and other personal trips.

In this post, we’ll discuss how leisure travel schemes work, and explore how offering them as an employee perk might benefit your business.

How Do Leisure Travel Schemes Work?

Some business travel insurance policies will only cover employees for journeys they take for business purposes. A leisure travel scheme will simply specify, in the policy wording, that the insurance will also cover employees when they’re travelling in their own time.

Usually, the leisure travel scheme will only cover the employee. But some employers allow their workers to add family members to their business travel policies, for an extra price.

The policy wording will also specify:

• How long the cover lasts. It might, for example, specify maximum trip lengths.
• What’s covered, and what isn’t covered. Some policies might not provide cover for certain high-risk leisure activities, such as kite surfing or skiing.
• Cover limits. For example, most travel insurance policies will cover domestic or overseas medical expenses, but only to a specified value.

What Do Leisure Travel Schemes Cover?

A leisure travel scheme can cover the costs associated with:

• Delayed or cancelled flights.
• Lost, stolen, or delayed luggage.
• Trip cancellation and interruption.
• Loss or theft of personal possessions.
• Medical emergencies.

Do Leisure Travel Schemes Cover Sport and Leisure Activities?

When it comes to leisure travel, some policies might cover the risks associated with sport and leisure activities as standard. Some, though, might specify certain cover limits for riskier sports and activities.

Some insurers offer specialist winter sports and ski cover as an optional extra to their leisure travel scheme package. This will cover some of the risks that are unique to winter sports, including delayed or damage equipment, closures due to extreme weather and avalanches, and the costs of unused ski packages.

Why Introduce Leisure Travel Schemes as an Employee Benefit?

There are two major benefits to offering leisure travel schemes as an employee benefit:

How Travel Insurance Improves Employee Wellbeing

Give your staff cover for their personal and family holidays, and you’ll demonstrate that you value their leisure time, and that you wish to support them in establishing a healthy work/life balance.

Covering your employees’ leisure travel might also make them more likely to take holidays, which can contribute to a healthier and happier workforce overall. And if they get ill or injured on their travels, leisure cover can help them to make a fast and full recovery, which could help them return to work much sooner than they would without any support.

How Travel Insurance Benefits Businesses

Happy and well-rested employees may take fewer sick days than employees who are overworked and approaching burnout. But beyond this, leisure travel schemes mean employees will be able to afford alternative modes of travel if they ever face a cancelled flight, for example, as part of their holidays. This means they’ll be less likely to miss any work if their holidays don’t go according to plan.

Flexible Leisure Travel Schemes From Capacity Insights

At Capacity Insights, we specialise in providing bespoke corporate travel insurance plans for large companies with 250+ employees. Our policies can include flexible cover for your employees’ leisure travel, and for any other travel they do outside of work hours.

Whether you’re looking to build a leisure travel scheme from the ground up, or you wish to change or add to your current package, we’re here for you. We can tailor a leisure travel scheme that truly meets your employees’ needs at a price you can afford.