What Coverage Can You Expect With Your Travel Insurance? (wine tasting)

February 20th, 2010 admin Posted in travel |

By Mary Sullivan

You may have heard there’s a major increase in travel insurance sales because of all the terrorism scares, environmental disasters occurring, and outbreaks of disease. Like everything else, you must know the ropes before jumping in headlong. If you get scared and want to cancel your trip, your policy may not cover you.

Say you’re afraid of a bombing in the subway or something like that, it may not be covered. The possibility of a hurricane a thousand miles away that MIGHT hit the beach you plan to visit most likely isn’t covered as well. Know ahead of time you’ll get no help for any of these situations by purchasing travel insurance.

What travel insurance will cover, is payment to you for non-reimbursable portions of your vacation. Those non refundable costs might be plane fare and good faith payments on motel rooms. Situations that would warrant payment are when the holder of the policy has to delay, or cancel a planned trip, or if the insured is stranded somewhere then the cost of hotel accommodations and meals would be covered.

Travelers insurance will cover, however, your medical expenses should it occur overseas. Since many overseas hospitals will not accept foreign medical insurance, travel insurance may be especially helpful. But of course, there are exceptions.

Many calamities that spur the purchase of travel insurance are not covered at all. Several policies do not cover terrorism at all. The concerned buyer must select their travel insurance deliberately and with these exclusions in mind.

But, even the policies that cover terrorist attacks will usually only make payment if there was an attack within 30 days of your departure and your schedule included that city. Travel insurance won’t help you much if, for example, a bombing in London has scared you into canceling your plans to go elsewhere in England or even to Paris. You could say there is no insurance for being afraid.

The sad fact is, being afraid is why insurance sells! But fears are the only thing that the majority of policies won’t cover. These policies will also require you purchase the specific insurance coverage you want (i.e. terrorism) within 15 days of booking your trip, or you will not be covered.

However, the majority of insurance companies did cover the cost of meals and hotel stays for those policy holders who were stuck in London in 2006 after the foiled plot to blow up planes. However, the policies would not pay if you wanted to cancel because there wasn’t a real attack.

What that travel insurance policy is going to cost you depends on the price of your actual trip as well as what you are going to want to cover. A comprehensive policy covers; cancellations, delays that strand you, lost luggage, flight accident, and emergency medical attention. You have the option of buying just the insurance that you specifically want.

There are even companies who sell policies that allow you to cancel for any reason. If you cancel your trip up to three fourths of the cost can be covered by the policy if there is a “cancel for any reason” clause. Generally you will pay an additional forty percent premium to get this coverage.

Travel insurance brokers sell roughly seventeen million policies every year in the U.S. Yearly sales of these policies have almost doubled since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. With the occurrence of disease outbreaks and environmental disasters, sales are expected to continue to rise.

When deciding on how much travel insurance and what needs coverage one should bear in mind that many companies that provide travel will often not penalize the traveler if they must cancel or delay their flight or cruise due to large scale interruption in transportation. Sometimes coverage by travelers policies is not necessary and the traveler can be reimbursed by the companies or hotels.

Go to this site for further information on compare travel insurance quotes. For further insights on compare travel insurance prices be sure to visit that site.

Find Wine Tasting Tours Around The World