Thanksgiving 2024: The Insurance You Need for Turkey Day
By Michael Giusti
Fall travel and holiday get-togethers can be polarizing situations, as they’re often either incredibly joyous or incredibly stressful. These occasions also present many potentially risky areas, and each of those could potentially benefit from the protection insurance offers. Thanksgiving gatherings in particular bring crowds into hosts’ homes, holiday getaways risk getting interrupted mid trip, and office parties can be a minefield of risk. And let’s not even talk about amateurs frying turkeys!
This Thanksgiving and Insurance 2024 guide will examine these risks and show the intersection of the fall holidays and insurance.
Homegrown Risks
Bringing a horde of relatives together carries some inherent risk — and we aren’t just talking about the political conversations at the dinner table.
The most dramatic holiday risk is fire. Whether it is caused by a towel too close to the burner, or a catastrophic fried turkey explosion, fire can be deadly and damaging. But it is also covered by homeowners and renters insurance.
Once the fire is doused, any damage caused by the flames would be a covered loss, after the deductible.
And if anyone was injured in by the flames, two different parts of the homeowners or renters insurance could kick in.
The first is called the medical payments portion of the policy. The medical payments provision is meant to step in to help with the initial medical care of any guest injured in the covered home. It isn’t a large payout – usually between $500 and $5,000, but it is meant as a good faith gesture to make the guest whole (and potentially head off any lawsuits from the ordeal).
The second portion is the policy’s liability provision. If the injury was significant or caused lasting damage, the medical payments provision wouldn’t likely be enough, and the liability portion would kick in.
Those same provisions would protect the homeowner if a guest fell ill due to food poisoning during the celebration.
If the claim was especially large and ran past the hundreds of thousands of liability coverage a homeowners or renters policy offers, a separate umbrella policy would be needed to supplement that protection.
Neither the liability nor the medical payments provision would help if the injury or illness was suffered by the policyholder or their dependents – or anyone else who lives in the home full time for that matter. That would have to be covered by their health insurance.
In addition to accidents in the home, homeowners also have to worry about their guests driving – to an extent.
If the guest got into an accident enroute to the celebration, the liability falls squarely on the guest and the guest’s auto insurance.
But if the accident was caused by an inebriated guest who might have been overserved at the home, some states hold the homeowner at least partially responsible through what is called “social host liability” laws. The liability portion of the homeowners or renters insurance would kick in if the host faced that kind of claim.
Thanksgiving Travel Insurance
Last year, AAA predicted that more than 55 million people traveled during the Thanksgiving break. With that many people away from home, there are plenty of opportunities for things to go wrong.
When it comes to airfare, a new federal rule will offer travelers some protection. The new rule adopted by the Department of Transportation mandates that if an airline cancels or significantly changes a passenger’s flight, the airline must promptly issue a refund.
This rule kicks in if the flight is changed by more than three hours (six hours for international flights). It also applies if the airline downgrades the traveler’s cabin class or changes the flight so there is an increase in the number of connections, or if it is routed to a different airport. Additionally, the airline must refund any baggage fees if the luggage is significantly delayed.
The flight cancelation rule only applies if the traveler decides not to take the modified flight.
If the traveler opts out of the changed flight, the airline must refund the entire cost of the flight, plus any taxes or fees, including things like onboard Wi-Fi access they can no longer use.
The refunds must be automatic, prompt, and either in cash or in the same payment form the ticket was purchased with.
Prior to this rule, airlines could set their own rules for refunds.
One election-related caveat: Since this is an executive branch regulation, it could easily be overturned by the incoming administration, though there is no indication that the new rule is in danger for now.
The airline canceling the flight isn’t the only reason a trip might be interrupted, though. This is where travel insurance comes in.
Travel insurance covers unreimbursed and unexpected expenses caused by a covered event, such as an illness or accident on the way to the airport. It even kicks in if the traveler gets jury duty, or otherwise can’t travel for a host of other reasons beyond their control.
The cost of travel insurance is set as a percentage of the cost of the entire trip, as well as the number of covered travelers and the destination.
Travel insurance protection extends to hotel stays and home share rental fees, as well as many other un-refundable costs, such as excursions.
Travel insurance also has a medical component that is especially useful if the trip lead somewhere outside the travelers’ main healthcare coverage area.
Protecting the Get Together
Nothing says Thanksgiving quite like a pickup football game or a turkey trot.
The liability and necessary insurance for these activities depends on the details – primarily where it is being held and the nature of the event.
A backyard football game would be covered by the standard homeowners insurance medical payments and liability provisions.
But things get a little more complicated if it’s an away game. If the game is at a park or playground, it is less clear who would be liable in case of a major injury, though each individual player’s health care policy would likely be on the hook. An exception might be in a case where there is a dangerous and un-repaired issue with the field or facility, which could lead to a negligence or neglect claim against the municipality or property owner.
Organizers of more formal holiday events, such as neighborhood-wide gatherings or turkey trots should probably get their own special event policy to protect against any mishaps or liability.
If the host is a company, such as an employee feast or other celebration, then the company would likely need to carry the proper policies. Which policies would be needed would depend on the scope and location of the event.
The company’s general liability or business owners policy would likely cover a simple get together at the office. If the event is offsite or particularly large, it might be worth the company getting a special events policy. And even if the event isn’t particularly elaborate, a special events policy might make sense just to keep a small claim off the business’s main policy claims history.
Thanksgiving Risk
The biggest Thanksgiving spectacle is the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. For this behemoth, a tapestry of policies protects against mayhem.
Each driver of each float should have their own liability insurance policy. The parade itself is also insured in case any of the participants or observers is injured. The parade organizers also have liability policies to cover any damage caused by a wayward balloon, though that would likely be shared between several insurance caries or syndicates.
The parade would also have separate federally underwritten terrorism insurance to protect against the very worst-case scenario.
But thankfully most people don’t have to worry about wayward balloons or runaway floats during their Thanksgiving celebration. Even still, every host and organizer should stop and think through what risks they might be facing and how they might be protected from the worst.
Michael Giusti, MBA, is Senior Writer and Analyst for InsuranceQuotes.com
