As you plan your trip, it is important to consider getting travel insurance, especially for more expensive vacations. To better understand what travel insurance offers, we will discuss the various ways to get travel insurance, the types of coverage travel insurance can offer, and why you should budget for travel insurance on your next big vacation.
How to Get Travel Insurance
Fortunately for any aspiring world traveler, travel insurance is easy to acquire. While there are basic travel insurance options you can obtain through booking your reservation, these policies are non-customizable and frequently leave you exposed to a much higher level of liability. If you want the best travel insurance coverage, contact your local insurance agent about acquiring a travel insurance policy. This option is the most customizable, allowing you to build a policy that provides you with the exact level of coverage you desire. Additionally, a professional insurance agent can help you understand the different types of coverage, providing you with the necessary guidance for choosing what type of protection best suits your vacation. While your agent will know what coverages are necessary for your trip, here are some of the types of travel insurance you might want to consider.
Types of Travel Insurance
Trip Cancellation, Interruption and Delay: Trip cancellation coverage will reimburse you for non-refundable expenses in the event of your illness, the death of a family member, natural disasters, or if the tour operator ceases operations. Trip interruption insurance reimburses the nonrefundable expenses for the remainder of your trip if the tour is canceled for a covered reason (be sure to check what your policy covers). Lastly, travel delay insurance will reimburse you for lodging and meals in the event of a delay during your travels.
Rental Car Coverage
While this coverage is frequently bundled with the cost of renting your car, it protects you from liability in the event that the rental is damaged in a wreck, natural disaster, or vandalized. However, this does not cover liability insurance, meaning that you will be liable for damage to other vehicles or the other party’s medical expenses without supplemental coverage. See if your auto insurance covers you for international driving – most insurance providers in the US only cover driving in the US and Canada, so you want to be sure you are protected.
Travel Medical Insurance
This type of insurance typically only covers emergency events, so routine checkups are not covered, and there may be exemptions for preexisting medical conditions – be sure to check the coverage limitations of your policy. These policies will normally cover you in the event of injury during recreational activities, more extreme sports like hang-gliding or skydiving are usually not covered by standard policies. Additionally, this type of coverage does not cover the cost of transportation to the hospital or back to your home
country for medical treatment – look to add emergency medical assistance, evacuation, and repatriation coverage to your policy if you want to avoid this liability.
Baggage and Personal Belongings
This type of coverage will reimburse you for personal belongings that are stolen, damaged, or lost during your travels. Your homeowner’s insurance policy may cover you even while you are traveling, so check with your agent to see if you already have this benefit.
Accidental Death and Dismemberment
This type of coverage would pay a lump sum to a beneficiary if you were to die will on your trip. Additionally, it could pay you a lump sum if you are seriously injured or dismembered while on your vacation. Some policies only cover death resulting from a plane crash, so check your policy carefully.
In conclusion, travel insurance can help provide peace of mind while exploring the world. It is very easy to get covered, with many options for tailoring a policy to meet all of your needs. Think about what type of protection is important to you, then build the perfect policy to protect you on your next trip.