Here's our case for why you should consider buying travel insurance for your next trip.
Alright, raise your hands if you have purchased any travel insurance for your trips abroad. Anyone? If you didn’t raise your hand, that’s not surprising. According to the U.S. Travel Insurance Association, only 1 in 3 Americans book any type of travel insurance when booking a trip abroad.
Yet you’ve seen the signs of travelers becoming paranoid when they travel. People have an intense fear of losing their luggage en route to their vacation, so you’ll see more and more people cramming all their clothes into a giant carry-on suitcase so they don’t incur checked baggage fees (and can’t lose their luggage in the process). Ever wonder how the overhead bin space gets crowded before you’ve even boarded the plane? The fear that “something might happen” when you’re supposed to be on a relaxing getaway.
But what happens to those people if their luggage does get lost? Or their flights get delayed and they miss their connection? What if you were supposed to join a Contiki trip and you missed the first few days?
That’s where travel insurance comes in handy. Let me tell you a story.
I recently traveled on a Contiki Ireland tour where one of my trip mates experienced a delay in her flights. She ended up joining the tour 3 days later, when she finally was able to get a flight out to Dublin and then took a bus to meet us in Galway. I asked her if she had travel insurance and she mentioned that her boss had said, if there were any delays with her flights, the airlines would take care of her. Sure enough, the airline put her on a different flight, covered the cost of a hotel and reimbursed any out-of-pocket expenses she incurred from the delay. Sounds like a win, right? However, if she had gotten travel insurance, she could have put in a claim for trip delay and potentially recouped the costs of the 3 days she missed on the trip. What she saved in not getting travel insurance, she could have regained (and then some!) if she had been covered.
Travel insurance doesn’t have to be an unnecessary expense. Whether you book directly through a travel company or you get your own through a reputable source (I recommend customizing a package through American Express), there are many options to cover your vacation with travel insurance and give you some peace of mind when you travel. Some packages will offer to cover trip delay, trip cancellation, emergency medical, and other expenses. However, you don’t have to choose one-size-fits all.
No trip is too large or too small for any type of travel insurance. If you are traveling on more than 2 trips throughout the year (even if they are in the U.S.!), consider adding on travel insurance and the rest of your vacation will be a breeze.