With the end of Covid, travel insurance sales have increased in tandem with the rebound in travel as people seek to protect their investments against flight delays and cancellations, extreme weather events and the virus persistence. But travel insurance is complicated with a range of benefits, inclusions and prices. Here’s what you need to know before you buy.
Find out what’s covered
Travel insurance generally covers unexpected events, such as a family illness, job loss or a natural disaster, that forces you to cancel or interrupt a trip. It can also apply in the event of a strike at a transport company, a terrorist attack at your destination or when your travel provider goes bankrupt. These are known as covered reason. Most policies also include medical coverage, which is useful in other countries where your health insurance may not cover you.
Although policy prices vary based on age, length of trip and type of coverage, expect to pay between 4 to 10 percent of your entire trip cost to be insured.
Insure non-refundable expenses
Travel insurance is designed to protect expenses that you can’t get back in any way if things go wrong. Think of non-refundable Airbnb reservations or the cost of a trip to the Galápagos.
If your hotel is refundable and you can get a credit for the cost of your flights, you can skip the travel insurance.
Buy close to booking
Travel insurers say the best time to buy travel insurance — which usually takes effect within a day of purchase — is just after making your travel plans to have the largest possible coverage window. A lot can happen between booking a Christmas market cruise to Europe in June and going in December.
With many plans, purchasing travel insurance 10 to 14 days from your first travel payment entitles you to “early purchase” benefits such as a waiver for pre-existing medical conditions that affect travel If such a waiver is included, it will usually be prominently displayed in a summary of benefits, so read it carefully.
“Not all plans have a pre-existing condition waiver,” said Suzanna Morrow, the senior vice president of InsureMyTrip.com, an online insurance marketplace. “If I have a heart condition and if something happens, I don’t want to be excluded, so I have to buy a policy within 14 days of the first dollar spent.”
Hedge against the weather
You can’t control the weather, but you can insure against its unexpected disruptions. For example, if you’re ready to jump on the good rates in the Caribbean at the height of hurricane season, buy your insurance soon after booking so that if a hurricane hits and your destination is evacuated, you’ll be covered.
“That’s probably the biggest use case for travel insurance,” said Stan Sandberg, a co-founder of TravelInsurance.com, an online marketplace. He advises travelers to buy early — if you wait until the storm is named, it’s too late to insure against it, because it’s no longer an unexpected event.
Similarly, on winter travel, if you purchase non-refundable ski lift tickets and a storm prevents you from reaching the resort, you can get the unused portion of your ski pass.
This coverage may prove more important as climate change exacerbates weather events such as hurricanes and tornadoes, which are considered “natural disasters” and are covered by most policies.
Pick up the phone
With the proliferation of automated insurance offers when you buy plane tickets or tours, travel insurance can feel like a one-size-fits-all product. Not this. Many policies, for example, exclude extreme sports such as skydiving and mountain climbing, although there are specialty policies that include them.
If you have a specific concern — a family member is sick or you’re heli-skiing — the best way to find out if a travel insurance policy will cover you is to call an insurer or a marketplace helpline of travel insurance to get advice.
“Tell them the what-if scenario and then you’ll get professional and accurate advice,” Ms. Morrow. “Thinking you’re covered and then having your claim denied is salt in the wound.”
Travel insurance does not cover the ‘unwanted’
What if you dread spending a week in an air-conditioned rental in England during a heat wave and decide you don’t want to go? Most standard travel insurance won’t cover a change of heart.
“Travel insurance doesn’t cover you for the unexpected,” says Carol Mueller, vice president of strategic marketing at Berkshire Hathaway Travel Protection.
A policy upgrade, Cancel For Any Reason coverage, which is not available in every state, will cover a change of heart, usually up to a few days before departure. Most only reimburse 50 to 75 percent of your costs and the purchase must be made within weeks of your first trip payment. This will increase your insurance premium by 40 to 50 percent, according to the insurance marketplace Squaremouth.comwhich only recommends CFAR for travelers with specific concerns that are not included under the covered reasons for trip cancellation.
A relatively new twist on trip protection, Interruption For Any Reason, works like CFAR in reimbursing part of your expenses and can be invoked if you decide to bail while you’re on the trip for a reason not covered by standard travel insurance. Typically, you must purchase it within weeks of your first trip payment and 72 hours into a trip before you can use it.
Keep records
If something goes wrong and you need to make a claim, you’ll need proof in the form of a paper trail. That could be receipts for the clothes you bought when your bags went missing, a hotel room required when your flight was canceled (including flight cancellation notices from the airline) or a doctor’s note stating that you have Covid — or another disease — and you can’t. travel (With Covid, a positive test taken at home is not considered official documentation for the purposes of a claim.)
Resist the pressure to buy flight insurance
When buying an airline ticket online, most carriers offer travel insurance to cover the cost in some version of vaguely threatening language like, “Do you really want to risk your investment?” when you refuse.
Don’t fall for it. You may want to insure that ticket, but the policy is priced elsewhere. A recent offer to insure a $428 flight for about $28 on an airline website costs $12 to $96 with a range of options on InsureMyTrip.com.
The $12 option is closest to the airline’s offer. Caveat emptor.