In a recent survey of 1,500 American travelers that was conducted by the travel insurance company Redpoint, more than half of respondents said they have had a trip delayed by weather, while 70% expect that to happen to them in the future.
That study focused on extreme weather, which is becoming more common and can cause major delays or cancellations—the sorts of events people buy travel insurance coverage for in the first place.
But the truth is that even a 2-hour rainstorm can damage a vacation with a lot of time in the outdoors built in—like camping, for instance, or a beach getaway, or a trip centered on an outdoor concert or sporting event.
No surprise, then, that expectations of what the weather will be doing have a significant influence on travel decision-making.
“Weather is a determinant of when and where we travel. It defines high season and low season,” Dan Price, cofounder of WeatherPromise, a new type of travel insurance company that guarantees rain-free holidays, told me.
“I, for one, am deadly allergic to crowds," he continued. "So I always try to vacation in low season or shoulder season to avoid traveling when everyone else is. It occurred to me that that if I could guarantee the weather will be great [at those times] more people could travel in those seasons."
In 2022, Price and colleague David Klemm started WeatherPromise to make just those types of guarantees. They joined a small field, with the most prominent competitor being Sensible Weather, a company founded 6 years ago by Nick Cavanaugh, who has a Ph.D. in climate science, as well as experience in the finance industry.
The two companies do roughly the same thing, but have some key differences. Buying a policy from one might make the most sense for one kind of trip, but not all. That said, both have the same pricing metrics, charging between 3% and 8% of the cost of the vacation for coverage.
Here are the noteworthy differences between WeatherPromise and Sensible Weather.
WeatherPromise vs. Sensible Weather insurance: what they offer and how they differ
What types of weather are covered?
As of this writing, Sensible Weather covers a larger array of weather problems, starting with rain but also including snow, wind, and extreme heat.
WeatherPromise only covers rain at the moment—though Price told me the company is working on adding heat to the roster.
How do you buy weather insurance?
Both companies’ products appear as an add-on purchase at major travel booking sites. WeatherPromise is at Expedia, Marriott, JetBlue, and others. Sensible Weather works with more than 8,000 partners, including KOA campgrounds, Outdoorsy, Hipcamp, and the booking engines/ticketing systems Sabre and Amadeus.
If you want to book your insurance directly, however, WeatherPromise is the one to choose. Its website is far more user-friendly for this type of purchase.
Cavanaugh of Sensible Weather told me his company isn’t actively seeking direct buys from consumers.
How customized is coverage? And what's the scope?
Since travelers' needs vary, WeatherPromise claims to use AI to customize the proposals it surfaces for customers.
“If I’m traveling with my kids, I want to get them out of the hotel room first thing in the morning, so I would want the weather guarantee to start at 8am," explains Price. "Whereas if I’m just with my wife, we’re going to sleep in, and I would want to guarantee for the early evening hours.”
He says the WeatherPromise system will look at whether more than one hotel room is being booked along with other clues to suss out what type of traveler it is dealing with, and then customize the offer accordingly.
“For a given trip we might have 1,000 potential offers,” Price says.
In addition, WeatherPromise’s guarantees always trigger a refund of the entire vacation. So if it rains on just one day of a 7-day trip, the entire trip cost is refunded.
Sensible Weather, by comparison, has one flavor of price guarantee, and each potential customer gets the same proposal. Here it is: You'll get your money back for the day the weather event happens, but no refunds for the other days of the trip.
Where Sensible Weather may be preferable is in its forecast policy.
“If your forecast is rainy we’ll give you your money back,” says Cavanaugh. “We actually learned that for a lot of people the forecast matters most because it changes what you plan to do. In early days we got a lot of comments like, ‘Sensible said it was going to rain in the afternoon, so we went to the theme park in the morning and then left when it started to rain. Didn’t matter because we still got the whole day for free!’”
WeatherPromise, on the other hand, sometimes gives the payout based on the forecast and sometimes based only on the actual weather.
“It depends on the structure of your specific WeatherPromise," Price told me, offering the reminder that the company creates a custom guarantee for every trip. “But we definitely have WeatherPromises that work exactly the way you describe (i.e., we will make the payout early in the morning based only on the forecast).”
Is weather insurance worth the cost?
Let's crunch some numbers.
Say a couple plans to spend $2,500 for a weeklong beach vacation. If the insurance costs 5%, that would come out to $125—a not inconsiderable amount. For insurance at the top of the scale at 8%, the bill would be a whopping $200. That's more than enough for several restaurant meals.
Yes, you get peace of mind with this sort of policy, and yes, you are insuring the raison d'être of the vacation. After all, you might not have gone away if you knew the event you came to see would be rained out, or that you'd end up playing Scrabble in your hotel room rather than lazing on the beach.
But does the outlay match the outcome? I'm not so sure.
By comparison, certain types of regular travel insurance have far more inherent value. To give one example: If you are injured or fall ill in a place with poor medical care options you would have to pay tens of thousands of dollars for emergency evacuation—unless you had insurance coverage.
In a case like that, not purchasing a policy before your trip would be a foolish and incredibly costly mistake.
Does a rainy day pose the same risk?
In the end, the decision to buy weather insurance comes down to personal preference, based on how much you value clear skies and how easily you can pivot to indoor activities if need be.
If, like me, you're just as happy curling up with a book in a comfy armchair as on a beach towel, you might be better off skipping these sorts of policies and saving your money for a metaphorical rainy day.