While war generally tends to mean all bets are off when it comes to travel insurance payments, in the case of the recent disruption — which saw Estonian tourists to hotspots such as Dubai being ferried home via three special charter flights laid on — this has proved an exception

The start of the conflict also coincided with the half-term school holiday, meaning more Estonian families were traveling abroad than usual for the time of year.

One by one, in a move demonstrating game theory in action, companies opted to voluntarily compensate travel disruptions to more than a thousand Estonian travelers affected by the recent conflict, which began with U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran on the morning of Saturday, February 28, followed by counter-strikes by Iran.

This has turned into one of the largest compensation payouts in years.

Aet Altroff, board chair at Swedbank P&C Insurance, said insurance claims were already in the hundreds. "As of today (Monday – ed.), we have received about a couple of hundred applications, and more are coming in continuously, because clients fill out their claims while traveling, collect documents afterward, and compile the paperwork. We have already made decisions on about a third of the cases, and the clients have received their compensation," Altroff said.

Meanwhile, PZU Kindlustus, another insurer, says the total it will compensate alone will be in the six-figure range. "The compensation covers additional costs for transport and accommodation, as well as justified and reasonable expenses related to organizing transport and accommodation. Primarily telecoms costs — for example, if you need to communicate with travel organizers in Estonia from somewhere far away in Asia, the price of those call minutes and the total cost can become quite large," said Jaanus Tanne, head of claims handling at PZU.

Not only were vacationers stranded in Dubai and elsewhere in the Gulf region affected; extraordinary expenses will also be compensated for people traveling in Asia and whose layovers were supposed to be in the Middle East.

Not only is war something of a force majeure phenomenon, but even from the customer's perspective, disruption more broadly is often an afterthought for people when planning their travels, and placed in proportion to the original outlay for the trip — not the snowballed costs that crises like these can lead to.

"When people go on a trip, they often just look at the price of the ticket and the price of the hotel, and they set the travel disruption coverage limit based on those two things. But they don't take into account that if some kind of incident occurs, the cost of getting back can be significantly higher than the cost of getting there was," Tanne noted.

Among those "Aktuaalne kaamera" spoke to, opinions differed on how far the recent episode will be a game changer for future traveling and for travel insurance.

"We think the question is whether travel itself will become more expensive and whether things will need to be reassessed over time, but as of today this is not on our table," Altroff said.

Pille Plees, travel insurance product manager at insurers IIZI, saw the ramifications as likely to be wider, though only over the long game. "It may have quite a significant impact. I think both the conditions and likely the insurance premiums will change. I don't think it will affect prices very quickly — insurance is still a long-term business. First they will see how this whole case ends, add up the bills, and price it again. Actuaries will get plenty of work in pricing the new risk and assessing whether it fits within existing travel insurance products or whether the premium needs to be increased," Plees said.

As for whether the recent special exemption will mean a broader rethink over payouts in cases of conflict, Tanne noted that his company had already taken into account unexpected outbreaks of hostility in its policies.

"We had already included a clause in our terms a long time ago stating that if you are traveling and some kind of conflict breaks out there, but you yourself are not participating in that armed conflict, plus the foreign ministry had not previously advised against traveling to that region, then in that case we will compensate those losses under travel disruption insurance," Tanne said.

One thing all the insurers "Aktuaalne kaamera" spoke to were unanimous on was that interest in travel insurance from the public has risen significantly over the past week or so.

Close to 400 Estonian citizens were reportedly still stranded in the Middle East region as of Monday morning.

Following mass protests in Iran starting in late 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump had pledged both support for the anti-government protesters and the prospect of military intervention. In late January, what Trump called an Armada started to head to the region, spearheaded by the Nimitz-class carrier USS Abraham Lincoln. Then in mid-February, Trump ordered a second strike force headed by the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford, the largest warship constructed to date, to the region.

Historically speaking, some conflicts have been officially named something other than a war, to allow insurance payouts still to go ahead. The Malayan Emergency of  1948–1960 is an example of this.

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