Throughout 2021 the Covid-19 restrictions in Poland have been varying including a hard lockdown in April. Until now more than 53% of the Polish population has been fully vaccinated and the third dose is been available for everyone since 2nd of November. In 2021 the Polish people started to travel again. An increase of awareness regarding insurance protection has been acknowledged. Travel insurance became an essential and indispensable element of traveling.
2021 has been a tough year, with alternating hopes and disappointments due to the different phases of the pandemic disease. The political and economic situation is stable, Italian GDP is growing fast and the 2022 outlook is promising, but Italian travellers are still forced to travel inside Europe and Italy only, with the exception of twelve (!) overseas destinations where only packages fully operated by tour operators can be allowed. This means more and more people are turning to travel agencies in order to organize their holidays. Numbers are still low, but there is a confidence that more destinations will be added to the above „corridors“ in 2022.
In 2021 the progress in the vaccination procedure in Spain helped to improve public confidence preparing all sectors for a gradual return across de country. Tourism sector started to recover, but still was far from the tourism figures prior to the health crisis and mostly domestic trips was focused for this year. Offer maximum protection to travellers in the existing environment was the focus of ERGO Seguros de Viaje, launching new products and updating current portfolio to the new needs of the market. We closed the year with other important completed project. The Prove of Concept of Air Doctor, a digital platform that provides a global medical network for travellers, went live first week in November.
Even in 2021, the situation in the Czech Republic was not easy from the travel insurance point of view. However, ERV Evropská has been able to strengthen its market position and relations with its main trading partners thanks to its specialization. Already in June 2020, ERV Evropská was the first to launch the comprehensive solution for all Covid-19 travel situations. This step later proved to be crucial and confirmed the company’s position as the market leader in travel insurance, able to provide smart solutions. The first 4 months of 2021 were marked by a drop of sales due to Covid-19 related travel restrictions. Results were negatively affected by a small number of expensive trips (mainly the upper class travelled), which were purchased, insured and cancelled due to the epidemic (large damage from cancellation). From June 2021, the whole society gradually returned to normal life, people began to plan their summer holidays. The huge hunger for travel and the increased share of regular holidays in our portfolio helped to improve the situation. As there was almost no first minute holiday shopping, all demand was concentrated in the 2 summer months. ERV Evropská managed to maintain cooperation with all major tour operators, and we also established an exclusive partnership with the 4th largest travel agency (Čedok). Today, 9 of the 10 largest tour operators cooperate with ERV Evropská. Although companies travelled less than before the epidemic, they remained faithful to our services. After Allianz stopped offering its travel insurance on the Czech market, we gained an interesting part of its corporate clients. Despite difficult negotiations with reinsurers and our partners, we were able to continue to provide insolvency insurance for the main ones. Overall, we insure about 20% less tour operators than last year. We have renewed all large corporate clients, including the most important one, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In addition, since we had Covid-19 cover and clients are generally more interested in the quality of travel insurance, we have signed several contracts with a number of new interesting corporate clients. In November, we launched the modified SingleTrip insurance, which is built on a modular basis and allows for much better individual adaptation to the client's needs. At the same time, we launched a brand new Sales Online application.
More than 44 million people in the UK have received their first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, with Oxford AstraZeneca and BioNtech/Pfizer vaccines in roll out and Moderna approved. Further research shows the Oxford vaccine can also reduce the spread of the virus from person to person. The UK Government will have provided the first vaccine to all over 70s and those clinically vulnerable individuals by the middle of February (15 million people or 22 % of the population). The travel market is looking for Government support which could come in the March Budget, and ERGO Travel Insurance is working on an update of travel products to align with the roll out of vaccinations, with the possibility of a “quarantine passport” being used as evidence of vaccination that will be required for travel alongside the 72 hour pre-travel negative test.
The current situation resulted in the closure of 700 of our partner travel agencies in 2020, 125 more than in 2019. Further agency insolvencies and closures are expected. ERGO Reiseversicherung is, nevertheless, still already off to a good start for 2021 and have even brought three new and improved products onto the market: • Camping & Caravaning • Extended stays (formerly students & au pairs) • Complementary Covid-19 insurance ERGO Reiseversicherung has received very positive feedback from business partners, especially regarding the latter. According to estimations, the company now has the best solution on the market, as respective products of competitors are either relatively expensive or offer no comprehensive solution, such as with respect to the issue of travel warning or even short-time work. ERGO Reiseversicherung is best equipped for when travel bookings once again regain momentum. The company is also experiencing a positive development with respect to ticket and seminar insurance: agency enquiries are increasing significantly. The acquisition measures in the CTI/care giver sector are also in preparation.