Rain on Your Holiday Can Now Pay You Back, but Only in Europe

Airbnb has become the latest company to put a price on bad weather. Announced October 19, its new rain cover is sold as an insurance add-on at checkout and pays between €50 and €1,000 a day when at least 1.5 millimetres of rain falls within a single hour, between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. local time, at the property you booked.

Underwriter Chubb detects rainfall automatically using radar, satellite and forecast data from NOAA, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts and NASA, so guests never have to file a claim. The catch is geography: the product is available only to residents of 10 EU countries, for domestic and international trips alike, and it does not respond to snow, hail, sleet, ice or wind.

Airbnb is joining a crowded field. Vrbo, JetBlue Vacations and Marriott’s Homes & Villas already offer WeatherPromise, which is a guarantee rather than insurance and can refund up to the full cost of a stay when rainfall passes a threshold set for each trip. Pricing varies by traveler, destination and dates. Sensible Weather, available through the SynXis booking engine, covers snow, wind and heat.

Neither Airbnb nor WeatherPromise has disclosed the commercial terms of its partnerships, and neither measures extreme heat, the weather that disrupted European tourism this summer. Rain-only protection is worth reading closely before you tick the box: check the hourly threshold, the time window and whether your country of residence is covered at all.

Sources: Skift