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Travel Insurance: Don’t go without it

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The other day at the Scottsdale Business Association, we were chatting with our friend and co-conspirator Jerry Rose, who founded a high-end travel agency in Scottsdale and, in due time, sold it to Frosch Travel. He lives on as the Scottsdale shop’s manager. The subject of travel insurance came up.

He says he personally would not travel without it – and he travels a lot. It’s so important, in fact, that his company now requires customers either to take out a policy or to sign a waiver stating that you were offered the opportunity and declined.

If you fall ill or are hurt in a foreign country, on a cruise ship, or in transit, travel insurance coverage can be a lifesaver – literally and metaphorically. Not just for you, but for your family and your traveling companions.

Jerry recently had an experience that proved the truth of this, while he was on a European cruise. Says he: “My travel companion had a cardiac infarction while we were on board. He had to be taken off the ship in Germany as we were on the way to Russia. He hospitalized for five days. The insurance paid for all his hospitalization and put up his wife-to-be in a hotel for five or six days. They got her a cell phone, and they accommodated the couple when they had to reroute home from Berlin instead of from Stockholm, where the trip ended.”

Not all policies do all things for all people. As with any insurance, providers may set a various standard exclusions, such as pre-existing mental illness, alcohol-related injuries, harm from participating in high-risk, extreme sports, and injuries or death sustained in adventure travel. Understanding your travel insurance policy is key to satisfaction and appropriate coverage.

Your travel agency or insurance provider should give you a detailed written description of available plans and what they cover. Check out this PDF for a typical range of coverage: TravelInsurance Jerry advises travelers to study the offerings carefully and select the policy that best addresses your concerns.

Some policies are rather limited, and some cover a full range of issues – baggage loss, delays in transit, and more. For example, one of Jerry’s recent clients died while traveling with his wife and two other couples in Cambodia. Fortunately, he and his wife had purchased a top of the line policy. The insurance company handled the paperwork, translation to English, and all the arrangements to transport him back home. All three couples had purchased policies, and all three had arranged for trip interruption insurance. Because they were all traveling together, they were all able to accompany the widow home, with their costs covered.

These kinds of policies, of course, are expensive – Frosch caters to a high-end clientele. I asked Jerry what he regards as the minimum level of coverage. He said the bare minimum would be coverage of costs for the nonfundable parts of your trip.

Baggage coverage would also seem to be pretty much indispensable. Another client took a trip in which she never did get her luggage. “It was shipped all over the world,” Jerry says, “but it never got to her. She arrived in Europe and had no clothes.”

Don’t neglect this crucial aspect of modern-day travel. When a guy who’s been in the travel business for upwards of 30 years says he wouldn’t travel without it, he’s tryin’ to tell you something.

Image: DepositPhotos, © peshkova

 

2 thoughts on “Travel Insurance: Don’t go without it”

  1. I’ve used travel insurance for big ticket trips so I can get my money back if something happens that keeps me from traveling. As for emergency healthcare and evacuation, luckily my company provides this as a benefit, even for personal travel. 🙂

    • It’s a good idea to be on top of the benefits you already have!

      When you get old, though…. Medicare lulls you into a false sense of security, and you may forget (or never realize) that it doesn’t cover you when you’re out of the country.

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