Meteobonus, a new online service to reward travellers during holiday wash-outs or an abundance of dark clouds, has its first industry partner in SmartWings.
The Prague-based low cost airline, which is a subsidiary of the IcelandAir Group, has integrated a white label version of the Meteobonus system into its existing booking engine, allowing passengers to effectively insure themselves against poor weather.
The system works by calculating a flat fee (or premium) for each passenger based on length of trip and likelihood of bad weather based on historical data.
For example, a six-day trip from the UK to the Spanish island of Ibiza will cost around Euro 15 per person. In the event of rain or a lack of sun, Meteobonus pays out Euro 30 per day or rain.
AirSavings-owned Meteobonus says if more rain than average falls in a destination during a traveller’s trip (or if less sunshine is recorded), the dividend is automatically paid.
Meteorological data is based on the nearest weather station to the destination, and corroborated by the World Meteorological Association.
Unsurprisingly, Meteobonus is touting the service as the “next big revenue generator” for airlines hungry to develop more ancillary products.
It has bold plans to roll out the service to other airlines across the world, having secured data agreements with 250 weather stations in Canada and Australia and a further 450 in the US.
The company plans to also extend the service to include ski holiday later this year.
Cool stuff! It looks like an insurance, but in fact it’s more like online betting. Refreshing to see something new on the horizon, let’s see how this performs.
@daniele – agree, is basically a form of hedging, for weather!
Weather hedging for vacations isn’t all that new actually. There’s been a spate of weather guarantee deals over the past few years and a U.S. company (WeatherBill) launched RainCheck just a few weeks ago: http://www.raincheck.com
It’s good to see two of my favourite markets (weather risk management and travel) coming together though
I love the idea. I hope more is done to get better services for passengers either for business or vacationers due to bad weather.
My husband and I experienced a horrible ordeal. I planned a flight in December and didn’t think the weather might cause us problems. We complained to get to first flight after it was cancel and paid for 2nd connection flight again.
We were not reimburse or reconnect but only charge for other flight to get to our destination.
Why even add the flights if there is possible of cancellation. If there is cancellation, there need to be reimbursement.
I believe Metnext in France have been offering a wider range of similar product for 2-3 years through various French travel agencies and they seemed quite happy with the results. Companies can do this on a larger scale by using weather futures and options traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange or over-the-counter through various big re/insurers like SwissRe and MunichRe. Of course, WeatherBill has done a number of such deals in the US and seem to be ahead of the game. There is a very good group on that topic on LinkedIn “Weather Derivatives and Weather Risk” http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=64408
Most of the active parties in the industry are represented there.