Travel health insurance and covid-19 pandemic: evidence from bosnia and herzegovina

Until the COVID-19 pandemic, the world was experiencing a rapidly growing trend of tourist travel and overnight stays. As a result of COVID-19 restrictions, the travel and tourism sector experienced a fall and suffered financial losses. The purpose of the research was to investigate the role and importance of travel health insurance on the case study of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). The first part of the research was conducted on the basis of processing historical data from secondary sources. The second part of the research is based on the processing of data that reflect attitudes of tourists-travellers about travel health insurance before and during pandemic collected through online survey. The processing of the data from the primary and secondary sources was done through a single-variant statistical data analysis (analysis of frequency and distribution), and the correlation analysis and correlation analysis with the assessment of its statistical significance using the Chi-square test. The results confirm that during the COVID-19 pandemic in BiH, the absolute number of contracted travel insurance decreased due to the reduced number of travels, but the number of those who obligatory contracted travel health insurance increased. Of those who travelled abroad during the pandemic, 82% always or at times contracted travel health insurance. Almost half (47%) of those who contracted travel health insurance contracted an additional COVID-19 insurance. Those who travelled abroad during the pandemic, 9% had health problems caused by the COVID-19 virus infection. Main conclusion is that travel health insurance increases the willingness of tourists to travel even in case of increased risk (such the COVID-19 pandemic) and that it represents a successful model of risk sharing between tourist guests and hosts, with the mediation of insurance companies.