7 Things Covered by Your Travel Insurance and 7 Things That Are Left Out
Getting travel insurance can be both a blessing and a burden if you’re not careful. It’s best to know beforehand what it covers so that you don’t end up spending more money than you plan. Here’s what you should know about what travel insurance does and doesn’t cover.
What is Travel Insurance
Travel insurance usually comes in one of two categories: covering trip cancellation or covering medical expenses incurred during the trip. Sanetraveller can definitely keep you on the right track as to which decision is best for you.
What Does Travel Insurance Cover
There is a very concise list of what travel insurance does cover, which will be discussed first so that you can get a better understanding of what it doesn’t cover.
- Canceled trips: people miss their trips all the time or have to cancel at the last minute for some reason. Usually, if people don’t cancel before 24 hours, they’ve forfeited the cost of the ticket. Travel insurance, however, reimburses you for your fee.
- Foreign medical emergencies: having health insurance in your country of residence is well and good, but it’s not going to help you if you’re injured in a foreign country.
- Emergency evacuations: when an accident happens, travel insurance covers any airlifts you may need to a hospital so that you can receive medical treatment.
- Rental Car Collision: in the event that you’ve rented a car and end up in a motor vehicle accident, it helps to have some coverage, which travels insurance provides.
- Lost bags and delayed flights: no one enjoys their bags getting lost in travel, and delayed flights are even more annoying.
- Identity theft: in the event that your identity gets stolen while you’re traveling, travel insurance can provide services to keep you on your feet.
- Phone assistance: any questions that you may have can be answered 24/7, no matter where you are in the world.
What Does Travel Insurance Not Cover
With that said, you may think that there aren’t very many things that travel insurance won’t cover, but you’d be surprised. You won’t be covered:
- In the event of a terrorist attack: these are unexpected and traumatic events, but you won’t be covered.
- Participating in extremely dangerous sports: some insurance companies believe that you accepted the risk of participating in such extreme activities.
- Traveling to dangerous countries: countries that are known to be dangerous or have “Do Not Travel” warnings come with a risk.
- Traveling for medical reasons: this only refers to non-emergency treatment; planned procedures and surgeries are not covered.
- Unattended possessions: you can blame no one but yourself if you walk away from your bags and they get stolen.
- Ingestion of alcohol before an accident: insurers see this is contributing to your own injury.
- Vacation extension: there’s more to it than wanting to stay longer; the problem lies with extending your vacation but not updating your travel insurance policy.
Whether you decide to get travel insurance or not is entirely up to you, but you should really weigh your options and consider what is in your best interests. – Travel Feeder
About The Author
Cecil Lee
The author is an avid traveler and photography hobbyist who loves to share with others his travel and photo-taking experience in many popular tourist destinations around Europe, Asia and Australasia. Read the exciting stories with many photos captured on his journeys.
