Travel insurance can cover everything from flight delays and cancellations to unexpected medical emergencies when you are away from home, all the way to rental car damages or lost baggage that may occur.
I was born in England, so besides my immediate family the rest of my relatives live in England. My grandparents can no longer visit us the United States because they are not able to get travel insurance. At their age, it is too risky to travel without travel insurance in case anything medically pertinent happens. The insurance companies will not give them insurance because there is an increased liklihood that something significant could happen.
At around the time of the SARS scare in 2003, my grandmother was hospitalized in Miami, Florida. Not only was she in intensive care, but because of SARS she was also in isolation. Having travel insurance saved her thousands of dollars that she would have had to otherwise pay out of her own pocket.
Travel insurance is not necessarily for everyone, but it is definitely something that everyone should consider when taking a trip.
With airline cancellations and travel delays always likely in the forecast, you want to make sure that you are covered for all of the unexpected. Although we would all like to believe that nothing unexpected is going to happen to us, there is always a possibility that something will.
According to MSNBC.com, about 67 million Americans spent $1.3 billion on travel insurance in 2006. This amount is a 20% increase from what was spent in 2004.
Traveling with a family makes cancellations and medical costs much more expensive. Sometimes, travel insurance may even have a family package that will bundle your children with you for free.
There are many companies that offer travel insurance and the policies may differ from company to company. At InsureMyTrip.com, you are able to compare different companies’ plans and costs to one another. Another thing that is offered is an overview of what all of the companies may offer you. Make sure to pay close attention to detail, because often there are things that are not covered such as trip cancellations due to a divorce.
Although the cost of travel insurance may seem like a large investment at the time, you may save a lot of money if something goes wrong with your trip. If you are making a large investment in a vacation, you should make sure that you are covered just in case. It would be a shame for you to lose all of your money just because you may not have been covered.
Travel insurance however is not for everyone. If your trip is short or does not include a long investment, sometimes the cost of insurance is not worth it. Make sure to check out all of your options and seriously consider what is right for you. Even though your credit card may have insurance that would cover an airline cancellation, it would not cover the rest of your expenses if you never made it to your destination.
Photo: Scott Liddell
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