Rain Insurance for Vacation: How ‘Wetterheld’ Protects Against Bad Weather

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Berlin. The prospects are extremely gloomy: the rainy start of August spoils many people’s vacation in Germany – and the weather forecast for the coming days promises little improvement. the persistent Regen leads to chaotic conditions when traveling to the heavy metal festival in the northern German village of Wacken. On the North and Baltic Seas, beach holidays fall through the cracks.

Of course, if you go on holiday in your home country, you have to reckon with bad weather. It’s still annoying when holiday plans go to waste. Could a financial Damage payment not ease the disappointment a little? This question has become the business model of a Hamburg start-up: “Wetterheld” offers rain insurance – not only for restaurants, showmen or farmers, but also for private individuals.

Rain insurance: This is how the policy works against bad weather

“Weather hero” customers determine in advance how much compensation will be paid for a rainy day should fail. Amounts between 50 and 300 euros are possible. The insurance premium to be paid varies accordingly, ranging between 3 and 10 euros per day. Is it worth it? An example for Sylt: Anyone who insures their one-week August vacation on the North Sea island for an amount of just under 50 euros can expect maximum compensation of 600 euros.

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The insured is important amount of rain. The text of the contract states: “You are insured against the event of more than 2.9 mm of rain between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. on each day of the insured period (experience has shown that this occurs, for example, in light rain for 90 minutes, moderate rain for 20 to 90 minutes or heavy rain for 8 to 14 minutes).”

Rain insurance also applies in particularly rainy regions – with discounts

The start-up uses precipitation data from the weather stations from “Meteostat”. GPS coordinates of the holiday destination, which must be specified before the contract is concluded. So far, only destinations within the EU are covered, the contract must be concluded 14 days before the start of the trip.

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Holiday locations that are considered to be particularly rainy can also be insured, but in this case one will be excess agreed. The company does the math: If you go on holiday in Ljubljana in Slovenia, for example, which is particularly rainy, you will only receive compensation from the fourth day of rain in a row.

Wetterheld was founded by the two brothers Nikolaus and Peter Haufler. Since 2019 they have been offering insurance for farmers against drought or for showmen against rain. “A lot of insurance is booked with us, especially for destinations in northern Germany, very often Sylt, for example,” as Peter Haufler explains to the Hamburger Abendblatt. “With our insurance, we want to make holidays in Germany more attractive and carefree, but also travel outside of the summer season.”