Why a Travel Insurance Desk is Important for Your Business - Brownell Hosting

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Why a Travel Insurance Desk is Important for Your Business

If there is one thing that is in high demand with traveling in a COVID-19 world, it is travel insurance. Your clients want to know how they can protect their investment in their travels but navigating the travel insurance world can be challenging and time consuming. But for Brownell Independent Advisors, we’ve got the Travel Insurance Desk.

Launched in early 2020, our Travel Insurance Desk is in place to help our team navigate the complicated world of insurance. Laura Heidt, a 15-year travel insurance veteran, spearheads this resource and is a wealth of knowledge. Learn more about Laura and why a travel insurances desk is important for your business below.

Laura’s Background

If you’ve met Laura, you know she is as graceful as she is gracious, so it’s not surprising that she has a degree in performing arts and was a dancer before getting into the travel industry. Following her career in performing arts, she worked at hotels in Colorado, Arizona, Hawaii, and finally in Georgia where she started a hotel rep company. She then shifted to travel insurance, working for Travelex for 13 years and MedJet for two years, before she joined the Brownell family.

Why a Travel Insurance Desk is Important for Your Business 

You avoid the “what if” conversations.

Who wants to plan a fabulous trip for a client and then have a conversation with them about all the things that can go wrong with it? “Your flight could be delayed causing you to miss your connection…you could break a leg skiing…a family member could get sick and cause you to miss your trip” – you know the drill. With our Travel Insurance Desk, Laura can take on the “What If” conversation with clients and you get to focus on excitement of the travel experiences.

You will save time.

Explaining all the fine print and pulling travel insurance quotes can be a real time suck (and is definitely not what you signed up for when you became a travel advisor!). Instead of spending hours dealing with travel insurance for each trip, you can outsource it to our Travel Insurance Desk. Just like tracking commissions and coming up with marketing campaigns, we offer resources to do those tasks for you so you get to focus on selling travel and building relationships with your clients.

Your clients have someone experienced to answer questions.

You don’t know what you don’t know, and when it comes to travel insurance, that can be a lot. Travel insurance is so complicated since each trip brings its own unique needs. But Laura’s expertise is 15 years in the making, and she not only can answer most all of your client’s questions but also knows where to find the info if she cannot.  Many clients that have worked with her have had some serious “Aha!” moments when she explains what all travel insurance can cover.

She can cover your (you know what!).

It’s easy to forget (or not realize) that many insurance policies must be purchased within 21 days of the initial payment to get a preexisting condition waiver. Laura works behind the scenes to help you make sure travel insurance doesn’t fall to the wayside with the excitement of planning.

The Travel Insurance Desk can be an extension of your team.

Though the Travel Insurance Desk is part of Brownell, Laura can act as an extension of your team while working directly with your clients. Many of our Independent Advisors copy Laura in on emails with clients about insurance, and she takes the conversation from there, keeping the advisor in the loop the entire time.

Laura can handle the nitty gritty.

Imagine trying to do an insurance claim for a multi-generational family trip of more than 20 travelers. And they’re not all on the same policy. And you want it all to be filed together. With our Travel Insurance Desk, you can put the Advil back in the drawer because we’ll take on this headache of a task for you. Laura knows what documents are needed and how they need to be submitted, and she can get it all together in a timely manner. In fact, when Laura did handle a scenario like this for one of our Independent Advisors, the insurance company itself commented on how well organized the claim was and processed it quickly. Talk about a win for the clients AND the advisor!

You don’t have to stay on top of travel insurance trends.

We love keeping up with the latest travel trends, like a hot, new hotel opening or a buzz-worthy destination. But travel insurance trends aren’t quite as fun. Our team stays in the know thanks to Laura. Especially with COVID-19, Laura stays on top of changes in travel insurance and what it means for our clients.

The Travel Insurance Desk is one of the many ways Brownell supports our Independent Advisors and help them grow their businesses. Learn more about the Brownell Hosting Program here.

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