We often get asked by customers if travel insurance is worth it. Like any insurance, it seems like wasted money if you never have to collect, but if you do have to make a claim, it seems like a really smart move.  We’re used to insuring our cars, houses, boats and even our lives, but many people don’t really understand travel insurance. Further, many people think that travel insurance is one of those types of insurance policies that are almost impossible to collect on. So hopefully with this article we can provide you some additional information so you can make an informed decision.

We think travel insurance is a bargain. For an average trip to the Caribbean costing say $3,000, including airfare, the cost of the insurance will be $130 to $160.  The price is determined by the cost of travel, destination, age of travelers, and travel dates.  But in general, it’s about the cost of dinner out at good restaurant.  For that, you can make a claim for the cost of your trip for a variety of reasons, including such things as job loss, health issues with you or someone close to you, death in the family, weather, and transportation issues.  In addition, the insurance will pay, with obvious limitations, for certain medical expenses, dental expenses, baggage delays, missed flights and loss of baggage.  Obviously the policies include a lot of fine print, but the bottom line is that you get a lot of coverage, and when there is a problem, our experience is that our travel insurance provider pays.  You can check more on coverage at this link: Travel Guard.

As important as the coverage, is why you need to coverage. Some travelers who book hotels in the United States understand that if you book into, let’s say, the Hilton in Chicago, that you can probably cancel or change that reservation with a couples of days notice.  Many hotels only require 24 hours notice.  But that is not the world of resorts.  Most resorts have strict cancellation policies, which vary but may provide no refunds even if your trip is cancelled 60 days or more from your arrival date. And once you pay us, and we have sent the money to the resort, it is all in the resort’s hands.  Once in a while we get lucky and convince a resort to allow a guest to change their dates, or apply part of a paid reservation to a future reservation, but most of the time if the trip is cancelled less than 60 days prior to arrival, and if we have paid the resort, the money is gone.  You will not get a refund of any sort.  And don’t try to charge it back on your credit card—you won’t win.

Many of us who have travelled a lot, think we’ll never need the insurance. But in the past month we have had about a dozen customers who have had to cancel their vacations.  The reasons vary but include wife in the hospital, mother in the hospital, house in foreclosure, change in work schedule, loss of job, marital problems, weather and more.  Now, in a couple of these cases, the customers had travel insurance, and collected. But most of these customers did not have travel insurance.  When asked why they didn’t buy travel insurance, some responded that they didn’t think it was necessary, or they didn’t understand it fully, or they just forgot.

We don’t want to be pushy to get our customers to buy things they don’t think they need. So we don’t push it too hard.  But after listening to our customers who have lost thousands of dollars because they didn’t have travel insurance, we think we need to make the case for travel insurance.  Our recommendation—buy the insurance.  Don’t risk losing your vacation money when health, work, family and nature get in the way.  And sooner or later, it will.  You can purchase travel insurance and find more information at Travel Guard.

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