Breakdown

Many people ask, do I NEED travel insurance. We think the answer is yes and these scenarios help to highlight it and we’ll also include some different ways you can get travel insurance.

There are two main scenarios where travel insurance is worth the extra money and both are scenarios that most people think will not happen, until they do.

The first scenario is trip cancellation either by the traveller or by the travel company such as a cruise line. No one every wants or expects to need to cancel a trip and definitely you do not expect a cancellation by the travel company such as a cruise line, however, it happens often. What if someone in the travel party becomes very ill just before the trip or is injured very close to the time of the trip making the impossible to do? Most trips need to be paid for in full 30 days or more before the trip starts and you can rarely get a refund right up to the day you are expected to arrive. For example, Disney World requires final payment 30 days before arrival and you can get a full refund if you need to cancel up to that 30 day mark. However, if you need to cancel between day 2 and day 29 you can get a refund minus a $200 cancellation fee. If you need to cancel 1 day or less before arrive it’s non refundable. That is all assuming you have a vacation package which is a hotel and tickets. If you have booked hotel only via Disney (maybe have annual passes or buying tickets elsewhere) you can get a full refund up to 8 days before and 7 days or less you lose the deposit, which is typically first night’s stay. For Disney Cruise Line the full refund date depends on the number of nights on the cruise. However, after that full refund date the refund becomes less. There is a window of days that will be a 50% refund, a window of days that will be 25% refund, and if you are 14 days or less before the cruise there will be no refund.

 

The second scenario where having travel insurance is worth the extra money is if someone in the travel party has a medical emergency during the trip, this is especially true on a cruise or other international travel. For a trip inside of the United States most traveler’s health insurance will cover any type of medical emergency. However on a cruise or an international trip US based health insurance typically does not cover the costs. Even “minor” medical situations could turn out to cost thousands of dollars. Travel insurance will typically provide medical coverage up to a certain dollar including for medical evacuations, such as from a cruise ship.

 

Now that we have covered a couple scenarios that could warrant travel insurance there are a couple of ways you can get travel insurance. 

 

Credit cards

Many credit cards provide trip cancellation and interruption insurance typically from $5,000 to $10,000 along with trip delay insurance and baggage delay insurance (reimburses you if you need to purchase essentials when baggage is delayed). This is available only when you use the credit card to pay for the trip. 

 

Travel companies

Different travel companies offer travel insurance as part of their packages as well. Both Disney World and Disney Cruise Line offer travel insurance when you book your trip. Disney World offers a Travel Protection Plan which covers trip cancellation and interruption along with baggage delay and emergency medical including evacuation.Disney Cruise Line offers Vacation Protection Plan which provides for trip cancellation and trip interruption along with baggage loss and delay and medical as well as evacuation. 

 

Travel insurance companies

There are many different travel insurance companies that also provide coverage. The various travel companies, such as Disney, use these same travel insurance companies and others. These travel insurance companies offer different plans for different prices. They might offer different coverage levels as well. The advantage of using one of these travel insurance companies is you can also purchase annual or multi-trip policies. If you have multiple trips planned for over a year definitely consider this type of a plan, it’s generally less expensive than purchasing the insurance for each trip. 

 

Recommendation

We have used Allianz Travel Insurance (https://www.allianztravelinsurance.com/) for the past two years and purchased an annual/multi-trip policy each year. The policy starts on the day you sign up for it and pay for it and last for 1 year. We purchase the policy before our first trip of the year or earlier if we have already planned the next year’s trips and want to pick up the first couple months of the next year in the current policy. Even within the annual policy there are different levels which provide different coverages the same as you can typically get different levels of health insurance coverage within a policy. Each level has different coverage amounts so you will need to decide which is best for your type of trips. You can start a quote by choosing a start date, and your state of residence along with the age of each traveler. You then get a quote for the coverage of that plan and you can see the limits of that plan. It’s pretty simple to sign up for, you do not need to provide details of the trips for a full year policy but you do for a single trip policy.