Hotel owner on business insurance rip-off: SA insurers run as Covid-19 comes calling

Hotel owners and others in the hospitality industry have been paying for business interruption as part of their business insurance policy premiums. But, insurers are refusing to pay for the extreme revenue losses incurred as governments have ordered businesses to close their doors to halt the spread of Covid-19. Insurance companies are ducking and diving around policy wordings and playing a tactical delay game to save themselves from having to pay out vast sums. Many hospitality businesses cannot survive a double whammy of their own insurers refusing to pay and other large companies, like online travel agencies Booking.com and Expedia forcing them to refund non-refundable deposits. Corporations like Expedia, which dominate search engines, have rewritten contracts in their favour - and to the detriment of hotel owners - as the Covid-19 situation has evolved. In this interview with BizNews founder Alec Hogg, hotelier William van der Riet and insurance claims expert Ryan Woolley unpack the business insurance rip-off of the century