Travel Tips: Why You Need Travel Insurance

Travel insurance is as essential as auto insurance and homeowner’s insurance. Software glitches and severe weather mean cancelled and delayed flights, missing a cruise or a wedding, not just your luggage.

Simply, never leave home without it. The choice is which kind of coverage you want to buy, and whether it is a per-trip policy or annual coverage.

Luxor Temple Egypt, ecoxplorer.com — ecoXplorer Evelyn Kanter in Luxor, Egypt. Photo by Blaine Harrington

Travel Insurance Protects You

Travel insurance protects you against losses from missed connections, missing baggage, cancelled tours, cancelled flights, even losing your passport and emergency medical evacuation.

It even will allow you to cancel travel arrangements “for any reason”, such as the fear of political unrest.

What kind of travel insurance you should have, and how much it will cost, depends on how much protection is built in to your homeowner’s policy or your credit card agreement, and the length and cost of your trip.

You can buy policies that cover a particular trip and include medical evacuation which could cost $100,000 or more, from the Amazon, for example.

Others — like the one I have myself — will cover you for a year at a time, just as your homeowner’s or auto insurance does.

An Overlooked Benefit

Travel insurance gives you one central place to contact online or on the phone to help you, including reimbursement.

Having one central contact is a lot less stressful than dealing separately with your airline, rental car company, cruise line or multiple hotels in multiple cities.

The largest and best travel insurance companies have toll-free help centers that operate 24/7, including toll-free international calls.

Travel agents and tour operators often require you get insurance for a trip that includes airfare and a cruise, or another complicated itinerary.

That protects both sides – the agent or operator and the traveler.

Do’s and Don’t of Auto Rental Insurance

You May Be Covered Already

Be sure to check your homeowner’s policy and your auto insurance policies for hidden gems of coverage.

Be sure to check the fine print on your credit card, which also often provides some basic coverage.

Upgraded cards provide more coverage than “plain vanilla” cards without an annual fee.

For example, the Chase Sapphire Preferred card provides valuable protections like trip cancellation insurance, auto rental collision damage waiver, baggage delay insurance up to $100 day for 5 days, and trip delay reimbursement.

All of these could save you up to hundreds of dollars during travel – and more than pay back the $95 annual fee. Another perk is no overseas transaction fees – but that’s another story.

What type of Travel Insurance to get

Even the most basic travel insurance policy covers the most important three travel problems — baggage, flights and medical.

Then, you can add value or clauses to cover specific concerns, such as cancellation for any reason, including political unrest, or medical treatment at the hospital of your choice, even if that requires helicopter evacuation.

Basic policies cover delayed baggage, so you can buy yourself a toothbrush and a clean t-shirt and be reimbursed.

But that’s not enough for complicated itineraries like cruises or tours involving internal flights, especially to isolated destinations. Many cruise lines and tour operators require you to have travel insurance, for that reason.

What to Look for in a Travel Insurance Policy

Trip interruption

Without this, you are at the mercy of airlines, which can charge as much as ten times the price of your original, discounted, advance-purchase ticket for a replacement.

Just ask the flyers who were stranded recently by the CrowdStrike software meltdown that affected airports around the world.

And your hotel probably will charge you a ‘no-show’ fee that could be as the full cost of the room, even if they rent it to somebody else.

Trip interruption coverage is a basic part of travel insurance.

Trip cancellation

This is different from trip interruption coverage, and usually is included in more expensive policies.

Or, buy it as an add-on to your basic travel insurance coverage.

Cancellation insurance “for any reason” covers you if you decide not to take the trip at all – because you lost your job, an illness in the family, your dog sitter quit, or because you heard there would be political demonstrations near your hotel.

Medical coverage

Many travel insurance policies cover medical care away from home that is not covered by your regular health insurance policy.

Medicare does not cover medical care outside the United States, so it is especially important for U. S. travelers over 65 to have a medical component to their travel insurance.

Generally, travel insurance policies have a medical cap at $5,000 or $10,000, and usually cover everybody traveling together on a family trip. But read the fine print to be sure.

For a once-in-a-lifetime ‘bucket list’ trip – to see the penguins in Antartica, hike the rugged trails of Bhutan, or ski the Alps – consider a travel insurance policy that includes helicopter or air ambulance evacuation from even the most remote area.

MedJet Assist will even fly you home in a special med-evac aircraft. Expensive? If you had to pay for it out-of-pocket, it could cost $15,000, or even $150,000. But your entire family is covered for around $350 a year. Even less if you are an AARP member, which offers a discount up to 20% on policies starting at one week.

Other travel insurance companies I recommend include —

Allianz Travel Insurance
TravelGuard International
AAA and AARP

This recent article in Forbes rates the top travel insurance companies.

You can also check Insure My T rip, which also sells travel insurance.

Travel safer with travel insurance.

This was published originally in 2011 and is updated and republished occasionally as news events warrant.

ecoXplorer Evelyn Kanter is a journalist with 25+ years of experience as a newspaper and magazine writer, radio & TV news producer & reporter, and author of guidebooks and smartphone apps – all focusing on travel, automotive, the environment and your rights as a consumer.