Don’t want rain to ruin your holiday? You can now buy rain insurance

If for your next holiday you’re planning to jet off to France, Italy or Spain for some sun, you can now buy a new kind of insurance – against rain.

The catch is you’d have to book your break via Campings.com, a site specialising in campsites across Europe. Campings.com has teamed up with fintech startup Setoo to design insurance that allows customers to cancel their holiday 72 hours in advance if it is expected to rain and receive compensation.

Based on forecasts from Meteomatics, a specialist weather data provider, Setoo will notify campers of looming rain. Any customer deciding to cancel the holiday will then automatically receive a payout.

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“The weather is an especially important consideration for campers, who are more exposed to the elements than other holidaymakers,” said Jerome Mercier, chief executive of Campings.com, which also offers mobile homes, chalets and cabins and operates in six European languages, although not in English.

“We have been searching for a weather protection product for some years before finding exactly what we needed in Setoo’s rainy day protection,” he added.

The cost of the insurance varies depending on the typical weather in each campsite and the season, and it is calculated using machine learning techniques.

Generally, a policy costs between 3 and 8 per cent of the underlying booking price, with the average cost being €15 (£13) per week.

The insurance is available to customers in the UK, France, Italy, Germany and Austria for holidays in France, Italy and Spain.

Noam Shapira, the firm’s co-founder and co-CEO, said Campings.com can now expect higher revenues, suggesting that the option to buy rain insurance will convince more customers to go ahead with their booking.

Setoo, which has offices in Israel, the UK and France, is also talking to other holiday providers about similar types of insurance – for example, compensating customers who have booked a skiing holiday if there is no snow where they are about to travel.

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