We designed this FAQ to give you plenty of information, and allow you to enroll while you are review more details. We provide a generous 21 day “free look“, to add comfort in your decision to trust VacationGuard^®. This FAQ attempts to highlight the efforts we use in trying to meet your expectations, while demonstrating our decades-long passion for this business in the process.

It can provide you with travel insurance benefits for your vacation ownership trips, which are booked via your provider, the timeshare property management company/developer offering you our plan.

VacationGuard^® actually invented what is now sought as “timeshare travel insurance“ over a decade ago. We created customized travel insurance benefits to cover the real needs of timeshare and vacation owners, which we call Timeshare Plus. Different than traditional travel protection, our customized policy covers maintenance and club dues, exchange fees, plus much more, all in one plan. And we designed it so you can protect your use-year dues travel under just 1 plan annually, instead of buying per-trip coverage.

In October 2015, we moved to a vertically integrated model, where everything is handled seamlessly inside a carrier based model and world class service. VacationGuard^® products and services are provided by Berkshire Hathaway Travel Protection,* or BHTP, who has over a century of expertise amongst its executive team and is a premier baseline of travel protection. The carrier issuing the policy is Berkshire Hathaway Specialty Insurance, proving unmatched financial strength and safety, rated A++ by A.M. Best.

VacationGuard^® premiums are designed from over a decade of experience with these plans, while reflecting exposures for the timeshare vacation ownership company you may purchase it through. By working closely with our partners to monitor their affinity member needs, we simplified your enrollment experience.

• First, it is annual protection of your use-year based vacations
• We also include Trip Cancellation and Trip Interruption to protect your annual dues and exchange fees
• Trip Delay
• Emergency Accident Sickness Medical Expense
• Emergency Evacuation Expense for Medical reasons
• Car Rental Collision Coverage
• Lost Baggage and Baggage Delay, and more.
• Including our 24/7/365 customer support and MyAssist team
• VacationGuard^® has the longest timeshare insurance experience in the business.

Please visit: www.VacationGuard.com/flyer/TimesharePlus

Please visit: www.VacationGuard.com/DOC/TimesharePlus.

Yes. Timeshare Plus is designed to respond for trips which are related to your Use-Year dues with the Provider offering you our plan, and who coordinates your booking and manages your Member based reservations.

Timeshare Plus is annual use-year protection. You need only one Timeshare Plus plan for a given use year billing, to protect that timeshare based travel, whether you use your benefits in 1 trip or 4.

The policy responds for covered trips from the use-year due billing insured, through your vacation ownership company. See the Trip definition in the policy.

Yes, provided the trips were related to your annual dues and use-year insured, and booked by your timeshare company, or what we call the Property Management Company in the policy. We base our plans on the annual expected use of owners, while addressing the flexibility in timeshare vacation ownership. To address owners taking multiple trips in an insured use-year, the plan benefits have a maximum, but we do not limit the number of trips you may take in a given year.

Timeshare Plus recognizes and works with the various options within vacation ownership.

No. Those vacations are unrelated to your annual dues that you pay for use-rights. These trips may be provided to you as a value added for depositing with an exchange company, or some other basis. Get-aways are something you can access, for an additional fee. If you seek coverage for any non-timeshare dues vacations on a per-trip basis, just visit www.VacationGuard.com, and look at the Leisure Plus or the Post Departure plans.

For your added comfort, we extend you a generous 21 days to review our plan after purchase. We will refund you at 100% without delay or issues, for any reason, provided you have not traveled nor incurred a claim during the “Free-look“ period. It’s part of our culture for providing Vacation Peace of Mind.

Yes. VacationGuard^® covers the plan holder, and subject to maximum occupancy of the unit will automatically extend up to 7 traveling companions without requiring to be named on the enrollment.

With competitive Member pricing, your VacationGuard^® plan covers your ownership only with the provider offering you our plan. Should you own with more than one developer and wish to cover both Use-year Maintenance Charges, you can purchase a separate Timeshare Plus policy at www.vacationguard.com/quote/full/TimeshareAnnual2.

Fractional ownership, whether it is 7,11,or 13 or more weeks of vacation access, is beyond the scope of the rate and benefits for Timeshare Plus. When we did focus groups on this, and asked if owners would pay a much higher rate to protect this ownership, the overwhelming response was “no.“ If you are a fractional owner and wish to protect your use on a per-trip basis, visit www.VacationGuard.com., and look at the Leisure Plus, or Exactcare plan.

Your policy confirmation of coverage shows the specific dues year you protected: “Use-year dues insured: 20xx“

** NOTE: You will be asked to pick a “use-year“ during enrollment. The Timeshare Plus plan is issued on an annual basis, and can protect multiple ownership trips during your Use Year, per the other terms and conditions. The Use-Year you pick for your coverage period refers to the annual billing you receive, and the ownership based trips you wish to protect for that one specific billing year.

• To protect your 2016 dues related ownership trips - use a 2016 use year on VacationGuard
• To protect your 2017 dues related ownership trips - use a 2017 use year on VacationGuard
• To protect your 201x dues related ownership trips - use a 201x use year on VacationGuard

Use year refers to the annual billing you get from your vacation ownership company, which gives your access rights or use rights when maintaining your membership. That use year gives you rights to “x“ amount of vacation time that is pre-paid via your dues. This is the core concept behind timeshare and vacation ownership, or “prepaid vacations.“ You can only protect one Use-Year in any policy: See the Maintenance Charges definition in the policy for more information on this.

For your policy to be most accurate, even if you are purchasing mid use-year, have your policy term mirror the initial start for the use year you wish protected, which is reflected by your dues statement.

• If your usage year starts on 1/1, have your Timeshare Plus policy begin on 1/1.
• If your usage year begins on 7/1, have your Timeshare Plus policy begin on 7/1

This actually keeps it simpler. You are protecting a specific use-year, and not just 12 months of travel. We start the policy to reflect your initial usage for the dues use-year you want protected. Your policy will show this information on your confirmation. While it will seem like you only get a few months of protection on this one plan, because the policy end date may be soon, the value of protecting the trip is what’s important. Keep in mind this situation is a one-time event if you then renew, so your Timeshare Plus plan dovetails to your actual use-year start dates.

The simplest way is to just renew Timeshare Plus at the start of your use-year, to coincide with your use-year billing. This prevents you from forgetting, and wishing you’d purchased earlier. Renewing at dues time allows you to have benefits for those Use year trips when they occur, and give you the full use-year of protection.

Yes. One of the unique plan benefits for VacationGuard^® Timeshare Plus is that the plan can waive the pre-existing medical conditions exclusion, provided you renew the policy without a lapse. Given that medical issues are unpredictable; this can provide you additional comfort at time of claim. This is why the best way to maintain your Timeshare Plus policy is by renewing it to coincide with the start of your annual use-year dues billing.

The look back on the policy is just 60 days, unless this exclusion is waived by a specified condition as outlined within your purchase process.

To keep the plan affordable, we protect only one use-year rights and benefits under each plan, for the one Maintenance Charges use-year you designate, and is specified in our policy confirmation. If you wish to protect dues from other use-years, it’s easy—just purchase a plan to protect those dues.

If you used a credit card, either VacationGuard^® or your provider associate can help facilitate this.

We can only protect dues for the one specified Maintenance Charges use-year that was insured. If you have a vacation that uses dues from 2 use-years, just be sure to purchase a VacationGuard^® Timeshare Plus plan for each of the use-year dues applicable.

Timeshare Plus will only protect banked use-years that are insured, subject to a maximum extension of 24 months from inception. You can also insure banked inventory still held and through the Property Management Company/developer offering you our plan, yet that banked time must be no older than 1 year (12 months).

Timeshare Plus will only protect borrowed use-years that are insured, and which are purchased via the Property Management Company/developer offering you our plan. You may not protect borrowed time that is beyond 1 year (12 months).

Note that in the event of a claim, using a borrowed use-year, we can only reimburse your Dues for that future use-year once paid to your Property Management Company/developer. We can pay current dues on claims, but will keep the future dues portion of the claim open until your future year dues have actually been paid by you.

Yes. We cover land-based exchange, for a comparable vacation, provided you purchased VacationGuard^® prior to depositing. For your convenience and flexibility, we recognize purchases within 24 hours of a confirmed exchange deposit.

Per our definition of Exchange, we cover up to the value of what you are depositing to the exchange company, and not for upgrades you may do beyond that. If you have a 1 bedroom unit in red week value with your home resort, and deposit that for exchange, we can cover that since it’s a comparable vacation. However, if you start to upgrade your deposited exchange by adding fees outside their basic exchange deposit fee for a larger unit, extra units, or a different options, those additional upgrade fees you pay to the exchange company are not covered as they are beyond what was a “comparable vacation.”

Correct. We will allow “upgrades” to be covered under Timeshare Plus, when using your timeshare, meaning inventory they control and manage, but only with your Property Management Company, the Developer whom you own with. That is because owners do on occasion have need to upgrade to a larger or different unit, although your developer will charge you for it.

So, if you wanted to upgrade from your one bedroom ownership that you pay your annual dues for, to a 2 bedroom unit they charge you an extra rental fee for on your one vacation, their “upgrade fee” to the 2 bedroom rental can be covered under Timeshare Plus, provided you are reserving through your Developer controlled inventory. We’re trying to be flexible with the needs of owners with their Developer managed inventory. We do not grant coverage for upgrade fees after depositing your time with an Exchange Company, as those upgrades and fees would not be related to what would you deposited for a comparable vacation.

If you are using your time with your developer, the Property Management Company, as a general statement, their upgrade rental fee coverage may be within the policy limits provided under Timeshare Plus. Please check with us if unsure.

However, when exchanging, additional exchange fees beyond the normal deposit exchange fee for your comparable vacation would not be covered unless you purchase additional travel insurance coverage to protect that. If using VacationGuard for that exposure, you would go on-line and purchase our Leisure Plus plan on www.VacationGuard.com, for the upgrades and extra fees you are incurring with the exchange company for that trip. Our process to cover these extra fees you may be adding for upgrades and extras with exchange companies is easy and affordable to protect.

No. That is because Exchange companies offer their own protection. Once you have deposited your use time with an external exchange company, VacationGuard^® would not respond. See the Trip definition in the policy for more information as to why this would be.

Yes. While we built in flexibility for the reality that some owners may not travel in the same use-year as their dues, we can only allow an additional 12 months for that flexibility. Our policy benefits will expire no later than 24 months from inception. See the Extension of Coverages near the beginning of the policy. Your policy will show the expiration date of benefits on your confirmation.

Yes, provided you (1) use the deposited use-year trip within 24 months of your plan inception / start date, and (2) you bought VacationGuard^® before or within 24 hours when initially depositing that exchange.

Cruising, Tours, and “experience travel“ through 3rd party operators offer their own travel insurance, which is rated to reflect that basis of your trip. Because these reservations would no longer tracked or managed by the company who enrolled you, we cannot extend Timeshare Plus plan benefits to these 3rd party bookings, even if using your vacation ownership. See the Exchange Company definition in the policy.

See the Leisure Plus, which is a simple percentage of trip cost, or the Exactcare product, as offered on www.VacationGuard.com. That plan is rated as traditional travel insurance, by person, by age, and by trip cost, where it can work for these kinds of trips.

Yes. It’s actually most efficient that way, and will only take about a minute.

The easiest way would be to call our service center at 866-314-9480 and ask one of our Ambassadors to enroll you.

VacationGuard^® is not rated by person or by age. VacationGuard^® automatically covers the planholder and up to 7 additional traveling companions, defined as someone traveling with you and staying at the same destination as you, and under your reservation.

While we automatically include up to 7 traveling companions, see the Traveling Companion definition in the policy, as well as the policy conditions, which states that benefits are extended to the insured and Traveling Companions of the insured, subject to state specific requirements.

No. It is for members and owners of your provider, the timeshare property management company/developer offering you our plan.

A non-timeshare owner who seeks coverage on their own, beyond what is automatic for a traveling companion, would need a different plan. We’d recommend our Leisure Plus product, on www.VacationGuard.com.

VacationGuard^® benefits will follow you globally for your qualified reservations. While it comes up rarely, the insurance carrier is limited by State Department regulations on where carriers may offer protection, and this would be reviewed during your enrollment review by the carrier.

While your travel can be global, the plan is limited to purchase by U.S. residents only.

Whether you are driving or flying, VacationGuard^® plans provide benefits that can automatically start 2 days prior and after your actual covered trip dates. This allows you to have benefits 2 days before your resort check in date, and follow you up to 2 days after your covered Trip check-out date, or when you get home, whichever is sooner.

Yes. Provided that stay is within 2 days of a covered trip check-in, VacationGuard^® plans allow for automatic extension of benefits to pre-paid and non-refundable expenses directly related to your covered trip. See the Forfeited definition in the policy.

If your trip involves travel outside the 2-day extension we provide, and you wish to have travel insurance coverage for those days, you may want to explore a different travel insurance plans for those periods. You can use our Leisure Plus, plan on www.VacationGuard.com., where you list the additional travel dates you need, and the trip cost you wish to insure.

Yes. Provided their use is during your covered trip. See the Forfeited definition in the policy.

Yes. Provided it’s used as part of your covered trip. See the Forfeited definition in the policy. Airfare is for change fees, unless you forfeit the ticket in entirety. Further, we extend benefits for Frequent Flier redeposit fees if you used your frequent flier miles to travel for your covered vacation ownership trip.

Timeshare Plus can respond for the vacation ownership portion of your trip, along with our automatic 2 day extension. However, the personal vacation time that is outside the vacation ownership booking, is in fact personal vacation time. If you wish to insure that portion of your trip, you would need a different travel insurance policy to do so. View Leisure Plus, or Exactcare for your personal vacation needs on www.VacationGuard.com.

VacationGuard^® plans are rated for travel arrangements planned in advance. All our plans have a 10-day window to reflect this in our rates and process. For an existing reservation: You must purchase VacationGuard^® at least 10 days prior to your travel dates. However, if you are making an initial last minute reservation, with an arrival date sooner than 10 days, you can purchase the VacationGuard^® plan.

Your transaction date and initial reservation date with your Property Management Company are captured in the process. Unfortunately, we would not be able to honor the policy and would return your premium is the plan is purchased while violating the policy conditions. VacationGuard^® plans are mapped to be purchased early with your vacation plans, before you need the policy benefits.

Once your transaction payment has been processed and approved, our plan benefits take effect at 12:01am CST on the day after your approved transaction, yet no sooner than the plan effective date, which would be the start of the use year you wish to protect

The benefits are shared amongst the affected traveling companions as applicable and subject to state specific requirements. While a traveling companion can make a claim, the settlement is paid to the named insured—the person, whose name is on the policy.

The plan operates on a reimbursement basis. Once your loss can be validated as caused by a covered event, you will be reimbursed for your loss.

No. VacationGuard^® is travel protection that pays in dollars. We do not replace “points“ or vacation time.

Yes, as it will expedite your handling. Please go to www.VacationGuard.com/claims, where you can fill in your claim on-line. All claims are handled by Berkshire Hathaway Travel protection, who provides the products and services for the VacationGuard^® program.

In an effort to ease the claims process, you may upload or email receipts to our system in a jpeg or PDF. And while it will take longer via hard copy in the mail, you may send your claim form verification as well:

VacationGuard^® Claims
c/o Berkshire Hathaway
1145 Clark Street
Stevens Point, WI 54481

Yes. To save you time and ease this process, you may view the status of your claim on line, 24/7, at www.VacationGuard.com/claims, at the sign-in area. You will need: Your policy #, your claim #, and the email used for tracking your account.

We pay punctually upon an adequate and approved claim submission; you can be paid in minutes.* Fastest payment on approved claims is based on electronic payment of claim.

*Speed of transaction varies by processing financial institution.

If you register your preferred payment method with us in advance we can pay approved claims virtually within minutes, to get benefits while on your trip if applicable. Virtual payment options include PayPal or EFT when chosen as preferred payment method.

Car Rental Damage is a primary benefit, meaning we can pay the rental car company directly for a covered loss with proper claims information and submission. You just provide them your policy number and our information for the claim.

Certain states do not allow this benefit to apply as part of travel insurance, specifically TX, KS, and NY. Your policy documents will outline the plan benefits as allowed by your state of residence, or just contact VacationGuard to verify. Residents of states where this benefit is prohibited can inquire with their insurance agent about coverage when renting a car.

There is no deductible for Car Rental Damage under VacationGuard^® benefits, saving you from having to worry about your personal auto insurance deductible.

No. Our policy extends benefits to one rental car only, for the plan holder renting it. The policy can extend this benefit to the planholder, and/or a traveling companion, for up to one car, but both people would have to be listed on that car rental agreement.

Just provide the rental car company your VacationGuard^® policy number, from your confirmation of coverage you carry on your trip. They can then submit a claim referencing your specific policy number. Note that rental car providers in some countries may require you to still add their own protections, which is beyond our control.

Yes. Uniquely, we have benefits for the drive-to vacation too. If you get in an accident or the roads are closed preventing your passage, our protection plan can reimburse you for Trip Delay benefits like food and lodging benefits until you are able to continue.

Yes. We only require your Traveling Companions be joining you at your destination under your reservation, but do not require you to physically be traveling together to get to the destination.

Always ask to see the insurance policy being extended. Many companies offer “services“ but not actual “benefits“ that pay. Some companies offer tiered pricing for benefits, and rate by age and by person. But no credit card company will offer “timeshare travel insurance“ to reflect your vacation ownership needs. VacationGuard^® and our Timeshare Plus policy was purpose built for your needs.

Because parents let a child use a parent’s ownership time, our policy wording reflects this. While you are still the insured and policyholder, and any claims are processed via the policyholder, we can extend the trip benefits to a family member, provided a formal transfer was noted for your reservation at the resort. See the Family Member, and the Insured definition in the policy to view how this works.

To keep this plan more affordable, VacationGuard^® plans do not have a “cancel for any reason“ Trip Cancellation benefit, nor would it be represented that way.

VacationGuard^® support is open 24/7, at 866.314.9480. Our contact information is in the footer of this page.

It took 7 years of research and development and another 2 years for state insurance filings to build a model to insure pre-paid vacations, or “timeshare“. There is no trip cost to insure like traditional vacations, but there is definitely an exposure to the owners and members for loss of travel and during their travel. VacationGuard^® launched what is now known as “timeshare travel insurance“ on the web in 2004. Our executive team has unmatched depth, with over 75 years of experience with the timeshare vacation ownership vertical and have been involved in every travel insurance innovation for the vertical since 2004.

Yes! You can find other plans for your personal vacation needs on www.VacationGuard.com.