Travel Insurance

Country of residence

Policy start date

Length of cover
You can always extend your policy while you are away.

Type of cover single family

Types of Travel Insurance Coverage

Travel insurance is becoming increasingly popular with travelers looking to minimize worry and financial risk. Many people don’t want to travel unprotected. Worst of all, you don’t want to pay and still travel unprotected because you bought the wrong kind of insurance. After weighing the Reasons To Buy Travel Insurance, you will need to figure out what kind of insurance is best for you.

Trip Cancellation or Interruption
This type of insurance coverage covers you if you need to cancel in the event of sickness, the death of a relative, or if your tour company or airline goes out of business. There are other stipulations that will count as well such as if a relative gets sick, if there is an accident, strike, travel warning, storm etc. These are things that you will need to go over with your provider. In order to differentiate, trip cancellation insurance covers the cost of your full trip, and trip interruption insurance covers you if you need to leave after you have already arrived. Trip interruption covers the remainder of the trip you didn’t complete. Of course your insurance won’t cover your trip if all of a sudden you don’t feel like going anymore, so don’t use this as an excuse to be fickle. There has to be a legitimate reason such as your safety or a travel warning.

This type of insurance is necessary for trips that include expensive airplane ticket, accommodation, and entertainment. An overall high cost is best to be insured. If the total cost of your trip is only going to be around $60 for a plane ticket to see your parents in Ohio, perhaps insurance isn’t the best idea.

Health Care
Health care insurance is the most important reason to buy travel insurance. There are many things that can happen while you travel and with this type of insurance you are able to get the medical attention you need. As with all types of insurance, you must read your policy carefully in order to see exactly what it covers. Some policies require you to contact them first and allow them to make medical treatment arrangements, if you expect to see any money.

Adventure and Extreme Sports Travel
Companies such as World Nomads offers coverage for tons of adventure activities on their site. A-Z of Adventure provides a list of activities that are covered by their policy. Depending on your country of residence, the policy coverage will change. If you are living in the US and want to go shark diving, sorry you aren’t covered. If you are living in South Africa, however, you are covered, so you can dive right in.

Baggage and Belongings
Baggage insurance is included in most policies, rarely will you see it alone. Make sure to check with your insurance company to see what items are covered. Sometimes there is a cap on expensive items such as photography equipment, electronics, and jewelry. This insurance is helpful since you aren’t sufficiently covered by your airline’s baggage liability clauses because of its limitations. You can also ask for an ‘excess valuation’ for the times you carry something of value in your luggage.

Flight Insurance
Don’t ever buy flight insurance. You may have seen kiosks selling flight insurance at an airport. They mostly prey off the insecurities of nervous flyers. You do not need this type of insurance. This insurance covers you only if the plane goes down and you are on it. Essentially it is crash insurance. It’s unnecessary.

For the budget traveler we recommend World Nomad’s travel insurance.

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