You've saved your hard earned dollars. You've taken hours planning and you've finally decided on a vacation that you and your family will remember for years to come. And most likely you've never given travel insurance a second thought. Of course you haven't. Most people never do. But it can take only a second for a vacation to be ruined due to unexpected circumstances that you have no control over.
Since many of you reading this may not be familiar with travel insurance, the main purpose here is to give you a basic idea of what travel insurance is and how it can protect you, your family and your belonging while traveling on vacation.
So let’s just start with the basics.
Travel insurance can usually be broken down into 3 main categories.
1. Trip Cancellation Coverage
2. Travel Medical & Evacuation Coverage
3. Additional Trip Insurance Coverage
Now let’s take a closer look at each type and how you can benefit from it.
Trip Cancellation Coverage
This type of travel insurance coverage provides reimbursement for lost travel expenses if you need to cancel your trip.
Imagine this possible scenario: In order to find the best deal on travel, you prepaid months in advance. And now either you, your traveling companion or a family member gets ill and you have to cancel.
What Happens to your investment?
Nowadays, many agents and travel providers have very strict regulations regarding cancellations. In most instances, without travel insurance, you suffer the loss of a major part of your vacation investment. This for many individuals can be thousands of dollars.
Since this type of travel insurance is by far the most purchased, let's look at some of the circumstances that usually are covered.
1) Inclement weather causes the delay or the cancellation of your trip. A tip here is if you're destination is hurricane prone; make sure you buy your coverage early. Once a storm is officially named, it's too late.
2) Strike – not common but it can happen.
3) Your Home or your destinations lodgings become unlivable. This would usually be caused by fire, floods, natural disasters, burglary and even vandalism.
4) Jury Duty – Probably never thought of that did you? But, as you well know, it can happen and you have no control over it.
5) Terrorism – another possibility so it can't be ruled out either. If a terrorist act occurs in any city listed on your itinerary, most travel insurance plans will cover you.
6) Theft of your travel documents – another scenario that most people never think will happen to them. But it does. Think about what would happen if your passport and ID's were stolen.
7) The unexpected death of you, your traveling companion or a family member. Sad and unfortunate but it happens more than what you might think.
As stated earlier, these are the most common reasons or scenarios that travel insurance would greatly benefit you. Although plans may vary slightly, most of these incidents would be covered.
Many travel insurance providers for an additional premium might cover childbirth, legal separation or divorce and bankruptcy of your airlines or tour provider.
Needless to say, circumstances can happen at the last moment that you never even dreamed of.
Now let's look our next category.
Travel Medical & Evacuation Coverage
Although this fairly self explanatory, we'll take a quick overview at what this does cover. And just a note before we start, this is almost an essential if you plan to travel outside your home country.
Here are the most common types of things that are covered by this type of travel insurance.
1) Transportation the closets hospital
2) Physicians and other health care provider’s costs
3) Charges for surgical procedures, operating rooms and hospital stays
4) Treatments, exams and tests that you may have to undergo
5) Various drugs, supplies that are needed in your treatment and any additional services
That covers the Medical part. Let's look at the Evacuation part.
This part of the travel insurance covers you in the event that you have to be returned to your home country to undergo treatment.
Many times, special medical flights are required to get you back home. These types of special flights are not cheap. It's not unheard of to have a medical evacuation flight cost in excess of $50,000. Kind of eye opening isn't it?
The majority, if not all of the major travel insurance companies provide this type of coverage. If you have medical conditions, even though they may be under control, this should be something that you give careful consideration to.
And, finally, our last category.
Addition Trip Coverage: You were probably wondering where lost, misplaced, damaged or stolen luggage fell, well, it's usually in this category of travel insurance.
Here are a few of the common scenarios that this aspect of travel insurance will cover.
1) Besides losing your baggage, baggage delay is often quite common. This can cause you additional expenses until your baggage is found and returned to you.
2) Travel delay – you know this can happen. If it does, you may have to spend money on lodging and meals.
3) Missed connection – another common occurrence that at times you have no control over. This can reimburse you for the additional expenses just like a travel delay.
That was a lot of ground to cover, wasn't it?
But now you should have a basic understanding of what travel insurance is and the various circumstances that you might face.
In fact, the hardest part is deciding on what types of travel insurance do you really need. The only way to do this is to start comparing various plans from the many insurance providers that now offer this and fit the plan to your needs.
A simple and easy way to do this is right from your kitchen table. Especially if you have a computer and an internet connection! By searching under travel insurance, you'll be able to compare multiple plans while you enjoy a cup of your favorite beverage. In fact, most companies will now offer you a free, no obligation quote right online.
So take some time to look at the various travel insurance offerings that are available and give yourself the peace of mind to really enjoy your dream vacation.