Following Arabian Travel Market 2026, Breaking Travel News speaks directly with insurance and travel technology leaders about how repeated disruption is changing the role of travel protection, from a largely overlooked booking add-on to a more dynamic part of the traveller journey. Catch up with the interviews here and see more on the trends from ATM here.
Catalina Alexandra Dumitru, Chief Operating Officer of WIS Group Ltd, came to ATM with a straightforward assessment of where the industry still has work to do. Despite the growing complexity of travel, protection is often still presented to customers at the end of the booking process rather than integrated into the journey itself.
“It’s a checkbox somewhere in the booking flow,” Dumitru told Breaking Travel News, arguing that there remains a significant gap between insurers, distributors and the traveller when it comes to making protection easier to understand and purchase.
Her view is that the next stage is dynamic rather than generic. WIS Group is working with insurers and distributors through an API-enabled model designed to make travel protection available directly within the booking journey, with products and pricing capable of responding to the circumstances of the trip.
The rationale is increasingly obvious in a travel environment where the risks attached to a trip can vary considerably. A business traveller making a short-notice booking has a different exposure from a family planning a three-week holiday, Dumitru said, and travellers increasingly expect protection that reflects those differences.
“The problem is they want clarity and certainty,” she said, while arguing that airlines and travel brands need protection products that can be presented and priced more dynamically.
That could mean a shift away from the traditional one-size-fits-all travel insurance model towards protection tailored to the journey: duration, traveller profile, destination, booking type and the specific risks involved.
The timing is significant. ATM 2026 took place after a year in which travel patterns across the region had been affected by disruption, changing flight capacity and shifting government travel advice. Dubai’s Hoor Al Khaja, SVP International Operations at Dubai’s Department of Economy and Tourism, told Breaking Travel News that the return of flights, increased capacity and the easing of travel advisories had all helped restore confidence in the destination.
For the insurance sector, that environment makes the relationship between booking, confidence and protection increasingly important. Rather than treating disruption as something that happens after a traveller has purchased a trip, the technology developing around travel protection is attempting to build contingency into the journey from the beginning.
The broader question emerging from ATM is therefore less about whether travellers want insurance and more about how the industry makes protection relevant, transparent and proportionate to the trip being booked.
As Dumitru put it, a business traveller and a family on a long holiday represent a “vastly different risk”.
