Your vacation is coming up; it’s all so exciting you can hardly sit still. Passports found and checked, flights booked and confirmed, hotels selected and reservations made, clothes chosen and packed, travelers cheques purchased, arrangements made for friends to feed the dog and check your house.
Is there anything you have forgotten? What about Travel Insurance? Oh sure, Travel Insurance, that’s dull stuff, do you really need that? You’ve never lost a bag and you have a good feeling about things, there is no need for Travel Insurance.
WRONG! There is a very definite need for Travel Insurance and the need is much greater for Canadians than for many other people and yet many travelers are very casual about obtaining it.
Travel Insurance covers many eventualities.
If your flight is cancelled and you are stranded or if your bag is missing and you are in a strange place without even a toothbrush, the insurance will help to defray your expenses.
These, however, are not the most important or expensive eventualities that are covered. The most important is Health Care Insurance for while you are out of the country. British travelers are more casual about purchasing this type of insurance than are Americans or Europeans. The NHS, with all its faults, is always there for you and many people rarely think about private Health Insurance. This is spite of the fact that your NHS coverage is of no help when you are out of the country.
The concept of the ‘uninsured patient” is not part of the British, Canadian, Australian or New Zealand experience.
Neither is the phenomenon of patients being turned away from hospitals as they have no insurance or cannot document their coverage. But if you are taken ill or injured in a foreign country and you do not have travel insurance you are an uninsured patient and may have trouble getting care.
Marketing plans are extremely important for both organizing the internal activity of an organization and for representing it in front of external representatives such as investors. Marketing plans can facilitate the understanding of a company’s approach of the market, customers, and competitors. They can therefore motivate employees to perform better or encourage venture capitalist to contribute to provide financial support to a company with a clear sense of direction for growth. While there are different ways in which marketing plans can positively impact the overall performance of an organization, there is no doubt that when designed and implemented correctly, they always have a positive that impact.
The ancient Greek aphorism ‘Know thyself ‘ applies not only to human beings but also to companies. A proof for this comes from the fact that marketing plans usually start to be prepared before the company or the product they are prepared for comes to existence.
Marketing plans’ role is decisive in the beginning since it is always better to assess the market and its needs before investing too much in terms of efforts and resources.
If a company will ever end up with the conclusion that its product or service will not be a success, it is always preferable to get to that finding earlier than later in the process. Furthermore, while investors are happy to support an enthusiastic entrepreneur and its innovative ideas, not being able to transpose the enthusiasm into a well-structured, realistic plan, can represent the cut back that will make the difference between a successful or a failed negotiation.
The ‘know thyself’ principle is also reflected in the fact that companies possessing good knowledge about the strengths they posses and the opportunities existent on the market, can adopt a proactive strategy that allows them to become leaders of the market, to become the exclusive providers for a niche market, or at least to increase their profitability.