Welcome to another World First Wander, a regular rundown of the travel blogosphere’s best new posts – as spotted by our social media man, Tristan Rothwell. It’s a super speedy way to stay on top of the latest and greatest stories in the travel world. So grab a coffee, get comfy and get reading.
Take it away, Tristan!
Greetings travellers!
It’s time for another World First Wander – your one stop shop for what’s hot in the world of travel. There have been some great travel posts and articles appearing across the internet recently and I wanted to share a few of my favourites with you.
Christmas is a time for sharing magical moments with your nearest and dearest. For most people, that means the family – even if they don’t like to admit it! Maybe you’re having an extended family Christmas and travelling to relatives in other parts of the country. Or perhaps you’re doing your own thing and celebrating Christmas by visiting a new part of the UK. Wherever you’re going, there’s an easy way you can make sure you’re not left out of pocket by the unexpected this Christmas – and we don’t mean all the sprouts getting eaten.
Last month we launched our brand new travel writing competition, My World First. We had no idea it would receive such a positive response and we are absolutely thrilled with the entries that were sent in. A huge thank you to everyone who took part. But who was the winner?
Christmas in the UK isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Top of some people’s Christmas list is heading to one of Europe’s most fantastically festive cities and soaking up the yuletide spirit of starry-skied, mulled wine scented outdoor Christmas markets. Others crave a chance to escape from the cold, commercialised Christmas of the UK while taking it easy somewhere nice and hot for a week or so.
If you’re one of the thousands of Britons jetting off this Christmas, you’ll have probably started a mental checklist of things to remember. After all, forgetting the presents would be a nightmare! But forgetting the travel insurance could be even worse. Here’s why.
This Wednesday (30th November), thousands of UK Border Agency (UKBA) staff will be absent from the UK’s ports and airports as part of a nationwide public sector strike. With 60,000 travellers passing through immigration each day at Heathrow alone, it’s hard to overstate the scale of disruption that looks set to be caused. What happens if you are affected? Can you seek compensation? What’s covered by your travel insurance?
At World First we insure thousands of medical conditions. Some rare, some common. Some serious, some less so. One of the conditions we cover is gastro-oesophageal reflux. We issue a policy covering it on an almost daily basis. But many of our customers aren’t aware they even need to cover reflux until they go through our medical screening. Maybe that’s because, in our experience, people don’t feel the need to declare conditions that they think are relatively minor.
At World First we take the medical benefits of our travel insurance very seriously. Every single one of our customers receives £5 million worth of cover for medical costs. That covers treatment, replacing medication and repatriation to the UK if you need to be treated here.
You might think £5 million sounds like a lot.
It is. But we don’t want to risk our customers getting caught out. The cost of foreign medical care can very rapidly get out of control. Way out of control. And if you haven’t got travel insurance cover, you’ll have to find a way to pay the costs yourself. Not having a policy is not an excuse.
Take a look at this short viral from the Foreign Office. Could you afford to lose out in the same position?
To see what other policy benefits you get with World First, or to get a quick online quote visit www.world-first.co.uk.
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Last week we wrote a blog post to let you know about our plans to raise some dough for Children In Need with our office cake sale. Well, the event was a big success! After a day of delightfully delicious indulgence we made £450 for the charity. Fantastic!
As well as the cake sale, we held a dress down day for the office staff. Although, as you can see from the photo below, our Managing Partner Martin Rothwell’s interpretation of the words ‘dress down’ turned out to be bananas. Literally.
UK cancer support charity Macmillan has released new figures that help reveal cancer survival rates in the UK. The results are generally very encouraging: survival rates of many cancers – including colon cancer, breast cancer and non-Hodgkin lymphoma – show major improvement. But lung cancer represents one of the concerning anomalies. It’s a finding made especially significant given that November is lung cancer awareness month.
Here’s a rundown of some important facts and figures, the early signs and symptoms that we should all be aware of, and some suggestions if you would like to know more about lung cancer awareness month.
We’ve had some really amazing entries for this month’s My World First competition. There have been tales of camel kissing, AK47s, communist countries, ice hotels, the Amazon, a kiss from Olly Murs, stolen underwear and a fling with a diving instructor. And that’s just the start! The best news is that there’s still time to enter and give yourself the chance of winning a Kindle.
As you might have guessed, the theme for our travel writing competition is world firsts. Get it? We want to hear about your first-time travel experiences. It could be anything you like. And judging by the entries we’ve already had, it probably will be! If it’s a first in your world then it’s one of your world firsts. Tell us about it. This blog post explains the rules and reveals just how easy it is to enter.
The winner of this month’s competition will receive a Kindle – or the equivalent value in Waterstone’s vouchers if they prefer. Viveca Koh won a Kindle in a previous World First competition and sent us this amazing photograph of her and her new toy at the ECVB powerstation in Belgium.
You can take a look at more of Viveca’s photography using these links:
