Travel Desk

FEAR FACTOR
There's a new mood in travel these days-a steady and quietly pervasive neurosis. Wherever you go, it seems, there is something or someone waiting to screw you up. If it isn't the SARS superspreader in the next hotel room, it's some fool of a suicide bomber boarding your bus. Plan your itinerary, by all means. But first of all check the somber travel advisories and wild-eyed security alerts, the shrill breaking-news bulletins, the evacuation routes. And read the small print on your travel insurance.

"You are going to see health and safety issues come right to the forefront of the consumer message," says John Kodowlski at the Pacific Asia Travel Association's strategic-intelligence center. "People are going to start looking at things like travel insurance and evacuation insurance much more closely."

Dr. Roger Farrow at the Singapore headquarters of International SOS, a medical-assistance company, agrees. "The traveling public today have two concerns that they didn't have a few years ago. They relate directly to security and health. We've noticed a kind of nervousness in the calls we get now, and the nervousness comes from a lack of information."

Through what it calls its "alarm centers"-and there are 14 of them in Asia, from Shanghai to Saigon-International SOS acts as the medical-service provider for American Express platinum cardholders, and some Visa cardholders, as well as private and corporate clients. The members-only section of its website attempts to furnish these clients with the information they lack, tracking every virulent pox and security scare in the region. To browse it is to enter a landscape of meningococcal meningitis and dengue fever, of bush wars and (inevitably) the increased risk of terrorism.

"In North America, over half the FORTUNE-500 companies use our sevices," says Farrow. "For their HR and corporate-travel departments, we are their global eyes and ears."

For the traveling CEO getting ill or injured under International SOS protection, there are accredited hospitals and vetted doctors, personal isolation units ("for short ground- or air-ambulance trips") and preapproved golf courses to recuperate on ("because we also have a concierge service").

There are other companies in the region that will bail you out for a price. Meera Rescue is one. Based in Delhi, the company has airlifted injured trekkers from Himalayan slopes and evacuated executives stabbed in the West Indian jungles. It charges $1,530 an hour for a helicopter and $2,500 for a jet. The accompanying doctor will set you back $500 a day, and paramedics $200 each.

But for those without recourse to pricey medical assistance, the road can be a little rough. Take the case of Bennett Steinmuller, a traveler in Cambodia who was relieved of his laptop computer during a robbery and took a bullet in the process. He had a cheap travel-insurance policy and on arrival at the hospital called the help line with the memorable declaration: "I'm bleeding. I've been shot. I'm in Cambodia."

It was only after five hours, and much prevarication, that the insurer authorized treatment. "I don't even want to think about what would have happened if I'd been critically wounded," Steinmuller says. And the upshot? Steinmuller recently received an e-mail from the hospital telling him that the insurer still hadn't paid his bill.

But it is SARS, of course, and not banditry that has had most people scrutinizing the status of their travel insurance of late. The insurance industry's response has been predictably cautious, with some insurers hiding behind a general exclusion clause that withdraws cover in the event of epidemics and others flatly refusing to sell coverage for SARS-afflicted areas. And policies might not cover travel cancelled because you are afraid of catching SARS.

Insurers will have to address the issue soon, because SARS, like terrorism, is here to stay. For now, though, if you're on the road, keep your head low, your wits about you and always read the fine print.