The German start-up “Weatherpromise” is preparing to establish a new form of travel insurance. The Berlin-based company offers holidaymakers protection against bad weather, calculated from vast amounts of weather data. The first major cooperation partner is the holiday home portal Hometogo.
Founder David Klemm has been working on the new offering for almost three years, and “Weatherpromise” has now launched in the USA and Europe. Initially, 60 terabytes of historical weather data from around the world were collected and processed in the company’s own system. “And 10 gigabytes of new data are added every day,” Klemm told Hotel vor9. According to the company, over 500 million data points from satellites, weather and radar stations are processed every day.
With the huge amount of weather information, the company is able to insure stays in almost any travel destination in the world against too much rain. Within 500 milliseconds, the system calculates a dynamically generated price for the individual insurance. If a certain proportion of the vacation time is rainy, guests will receive a full refund of the cost of the booked accommodation.
Klemm makes it clear: “We don’t try to predict the weather, that’s not possible. We look at history and predict the probability of how much rain could fall. We then use a corresponding calculation program to generate the appropriate insurance product.” The cost of the insurance is usually six to nine percent of the booking value of the accommodation.
Hometogo is currently testing the new insurance product
The start-up has already found a major cooperation partner in the holiday home portal Hometogo. The insurance is used in particular for trips within Germany, with a focus on destinations on the North and Baltic Seas and the islands there, it is said. According to Klemm, a four-digit number of insurance policies have already been sold in the first few months. The Dutch camping provider Eurocamp has also already integrated the solution into its booking process.
The rainy summer months led to many claims. “But that’s part of the insurance business,” says Klemm calmly. The young company already employs a total of 20 people and is financed by a venture capital fund from the USA. The entire process, including the reimbursement process, is fully automated. “Every customer receives a link that gives them direct access to the insured weather location and shows them how much rain it has fallen and whether or not they will be paid out,” says Klemm.
His goal is for his weather insurance to establish itself in the near future in a similar way to travel cancellation insurance. Other providers have already entered the market with similar offers. For example, the Hamburg-based insurtech company Wetterheld also offers insurance against bad weather on vacation, which is sold through TUI, for example. David Klemm believes that interest from the travel industry is already enormous. And in principle, the product can be expanded further. Insurance against other weather phenomena, such as heat waves, strong winds and snow, is also possible, as this data is also available in the background.
Pascal Brückmann
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