A little rain may never have hurt anyone, but when it comes to travel, even a few ill-timed showers can derail the best-laid plans.
Recognizing this challenge, Nick Cavanaugh, a former hedge fund analyst with a background in climate science, founded Sensible Weather in early 2020. The company’s Weather Guarantee — marketed not as insurance but as a “weather-protection product” — promises to compensate travelers when rain or other adverse weather conditions put a damper on their plans.
“We see ourselves as an adjacent product to travel and ticket insurance,” said Cavanaugh, also Sensible Weather’s CEO, saying those policies “cover you in cases of extreme weather. But most of the time, it’s not a hurricane that’s interrupting a trip — it’s a rainy day. We’re focused on weather impact that’s much more common.”
The Weather Guarantee is product-based: In the case of a hotel, if the forecast during the stay exceeds the weather parameters outlined in the Weather Guarantee, the covered guest would receive a refund for the affected days of the reservation. The same goes for a theme park day.
Sensible Weather sells its Weather Guarantees via supplier partners, including hotels and resorts, ski resorts, theme parks and golf courses. It also works with outdoor hospitality providers such as KOA Campgrounds and Hipcamp.
Weather Guarantees are integrated into a supplier’s booking channels, including GDS platforms, and can be added to a reservation at checkout (supplier partners take a cut). Once a hotel is selected, Sensible Weather’s system uses the location and date to offer a product, which appears on the checkout page.
“The coverage and the price for that product is going to vary, based on where you’re going, the time of year, what you’re spending and so forth,” Cavanaugh said.
Ideally, he added, a Weather Guarantee aims to hit a price point he called “optimal for the consumer,” about 5% to 10% of a booking’s total.
Sensible Weather touts its ability to quickly reimburse travelers without the need to file a claim by monitoring weather in real time and automatically alerting a client when coverage kicks in.
“You essentially just click on a link, and there are a couple of options to get your reimbursement,” Cavanaugh said. “If you use PayPal, you’ll have your money in minutes.”
Rain remains the company’s primary focus at present, but Sensible Weather recently partnered with Collective Retreats’ Collective Hill Country glamping property in Wimberley, Texas, to offer its first heat-related Weather Guarantee. Guests who add a Weather Guarantee with a predetermined heat threshold to their Collective Hill reservation will be reimbursed if the temperature is expected to exceed that threshold on the day of their stay.
“Our system can price any combination of weather variables and provide coverage for it, whether that’s temperature, like heat, or too much snow causing white-out conditions in the Alps,” Cavanaugh said. “The sky’s the limit.”
Sensible Weather isn’t the only company seeing growing demand for weather protection in travel.
WeatherPromise sold its first weather-protection product last year. The company, with offices in Germany and the U.S., specializes in “customized weather promises” it sells in partnership with various travel suppliers, including HomeToGo, one of Europe’s largest vacation rental brands.
WeatherPromise emphasizes coverage across an entire trip, inclusive of accommodations, flights, activities and events. The company will refund as much as the entire trip cost automatically if weather conditions surpass specified limits. Covered weather is usually rain, but the company has one heat partnership and partners with some European ski resorts on snow-related coverage.
Most WeatherPromise coverage costs between 3% and 8% of total trip cost, said co-founder Daniel Price, with suppliers getting a percentage of that sum.
“People invest a lot in travel,” he said. “We realized we could really help people by giving them the confidence to go and explore the world.”
Suppliers benefit, he said, because weather guarantees make people more likely to book during traditionally rainy seasons. “We’re helping them sell inventory at times of the year when they’ve got lots of vacancy.”
As global weather patterns become more erratic and extreme, Price foresees rising interest in weather protection products among suppliers and travelers.
“The climate is changing, and the severity of weather events is increasing,” he said. “It is changing travel patterns. You now have people concerned about going to southern Europe in August because of the unpredictability of weather. What used to be peak season in certain places is changing, and we’re able to step in and actually help with that.”
Although they currently work with travel suppliers, both Sensible Weather and WeatherPromise are turning their attention to travel advisors.
Cavanaugh said Sensible Weather hopes to partner with advisors and offer the same commission it gives suppliers.
WeatherPromise is piloting a dedicated advisor product that is expected to roll out more widely in the fall.
“It opens up opportunities for an advisor to say, ‘Have you thought about this place that wouldn’t necessarily be on your list of destinations, because you think the weather won’t be ideal?'” Price said. “And it’s a way for travel advisors to really have credibility with their guests.”
Linda Sergeant, founder of New Jersey-based Far and Away Luxury Destinations, said her experience with weather-protection products, which she’s sold as ski package add-ons, have been “brilliant.”
“Clients can feel good about making an investment in their travel experience with confidence that if there is little to no snow that season, they are protected with a money-back guarantee,” she said.
