-- Amidst a global pandemic, BestQuote Travel Insurance Agency is celebrating its website’s 10th anniversary on June 1st. While the pandemic still looms large for Canada’s travel industry, this is still a noteworthy milestone for the Vancouver-based travel insurance specialist, which has built Canada’s most product-rich price comparison tool for travel insurance consumers.
BestQuote got its start when its President and CEO, Bob Hornal, wanted to provide his financial advisory clients with a fast and reliable resource to explore the market’s travel insurance options. The project quickly became successful when the Canadian government created the new class of ‘super visa’ immigration in the fall of 2011.
Once international travel resumes, many Canadians and visitors to Canada will be looking into policy details more closely to see whether they have coverage for COVID related expenses and otherwise. “Consumers have always had a hard time comparing policy details, and finding fair value, that’s why we built the site”, said Bob Hornal. “But now the travel insurance landscape has been changing rapidly, with companies changing their COVID coverage details every few months.”
While a heightened awareness of the need to have adequate travel insurance could mean he can expect to see more customers back on his site soon, no one is breathing a sigh of relief for the business just yet. “Thankfully, with the government chipping in some wage subsidy, we’ve been able to keep all of our staff in place – even if they don’t have enough to do. We do expect that we’ll become busier once they get rid of the quarantine hotel idea, and re-open the US border. But we won’t get back to the same level of travel that we had for at least another year, maybe two or more. It’s not easy to find, train and license great customer service people like ours so we’ll just celebrate the fact that we’ve been able to keep them through all of this.”
BestQuote operates with just five customer service employees, largely because they are an insuretech that operates a customer-facing price comparison website with trained advisors on hand for advice and customer support. In 2018 however, the specialist agency was recognized for their professionalism and operational strength by being accepted by Lloyd’s of London to act as coverholder of their own visitor to Canada insurance policy.
“Before the pandemic, our recent success was being driven by helping older travellers with health issues navigate the various options, medical questionnaires, and issues that they face when trying to locate solid coverage at a reasonable price. But being accepted by Lloyd’s so that we could issue our own visitor to Canada insurance for tourists, super visa holders and temporary foreign workers? That was our proudest pre-pandemic moment. Now, our proudest moment is probably that we know that our core group of staff will get through this pandemic together and see light at the end of the tunnel…in a few months.”
When asked what Canada needs to do to get through the final stages of returning to normal over this upcoming summer, Bob Hornal replied, “People need to stay cautious, or this won’t end anywhere near as soon as we’d like. Everyone needs to get vaccinated, and stop themselves from thinking about pitfalls of vaccine technology, conspiracy theories, or how they don’t need a vaccine. Our provincial governments need to spend the money it takes to address any vaccine hesitancy – like hiring celebrities to get involved in public messaging. But they also have to open up the vaccine program for visitors to Canada. You can’t have all the super visa holders, visitors and temporary foreign workers living and working amongst us without being able to be vaccinated. Our economy and our families need these people here, why shouldn’t we open up the vaccine program to them too? We all need that to happen – sooner rather than later.”
In the upcoming years, BestQuote is looking forward to hiring more employees and seeing a resurgence in international travel. “In five years I hope that we’ll have a few more employees – and I’ll be able to start thinking again about becoming a snowbird myself one day!” Bob laughs, “I can see myself running around the RV campgrounds with a stack of business cards and cold beer!”
More information on the business can be found at https://bestquotetravelinsurance.ca
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