One Thing to Consider for All of Your Trips

If you’re like most of my clients, you’re wondering if you should buy travel insurance.

The answer is yes, probably.

You should always consider purchasing travel insurance. You may decide it’s not needed for every trip, but you should at least consider it.

And here’s why:

You never know what can happen.

You’ve invested a lot of money into a trip and want to protect your travel investment.

Travel insurance protects your investment by reimbursing you for non-refundable trip costs in the event of a cancellation for a covered reason. 

Just a few examples of where insurance can be helpful:

• One of the travelers breaks their hip/foot/other body part the day before a trip and can no longer go

• A family or work-related emergency prevents you from traveling

• Your renewed passport didn’t arrive in time for your departure

• A snowstorm, hurricane, or other extreme weather event threatens your departure or arrival (important to consider when you are traveling and if this will be a concern at your destination or where you are traveling from).

Maybe those reasons seem obvious. But there are a lot of covered reasons that you might not think of:

• You and your travel companion get divorced or separated before your trip.

• You get stuck with jury duty.

• Your travel companion gets laid off.

• The destination wedding you’re planning to attend gets canceled.

• The travel alert for your destination moves to level 4 or higher.

And what about just any old reason you want to cancel that may or may not be outlined in the policy? There are policies that include Cancel for Any Reason (CFAR) and it means exactly that. It’s important to work with your travel advisor to make sure CFAR is included in your policy if that’s important to you, and you must purchase insurance within 14-21 days of your initial trip deposit in order to secure this benefit.

Insurance and Travel Costs

Maybe you’re concerned about the upfront cost for the travel insurance, which depending on the trip may be somewhat costly in addition to whatever deposit you’ve placed on the trip itself. Don’t let that stop you from purchasing trip protection! You can insure your initial deposit to start and then add additional coverage once further trip payments are made. If you purchase flights after your initial deposit is made and insurance is purchased, work with your travel advisor to add the cost of the flight if you want that portion of your trip to be insured.

My Credit Card Provides Insurance

I get a lot of questions about the need to purchase insurance if the client’s credit card includes some form of travel insurance. My advice? Read through the policy to understand what is covered and what is not. If you find the coverage acceptable and choose to not purchase additional insurance, that’s an option. But the insurance offered by the credit cards is usually not comprehensive - meaning that medical coverage or emergency evacuation may or may not be provided.

And if you don’t care about trip cancellation and only want to cover the post-departure elements of your trip, such as medical coverage, trip delay, lost or delayed baggage? This is possible!

My insurance partners are available to help answer these types of questions for my clients so they can make an informed decision about purchasing travel protection. If you're unsure if trip protection is necessary or right for you, I can coordinate a call with my partners so you can get it straight from the insurance experts!

But the first step? Consider protecting your trip!

Learn more about our travel planning services and how we can help you have an unforgettable experience.