You’ve just finished booking your trip, and you can’t wait for six months to go by until you leave for your faraway destination. Partially, you can’t wait due to your excitement, and partially you could feel very anxious because so much can happen between now and six months. What if an accident occurs and forces you to change your mind? You risk losing thousands of dollars when you can’t refund your plane tickets, hotel accommodations or cruise booking. You might consider buying travel cancellation insurance to ease your mind. Hopefully, you’ll never have to use it, but meanwhile, you can replace your anxiety with 100 percent excitement.
Whether for domestic travel or travel abroad, you can buy travel cancellation insurance so you don’t lose everything when emergency strikes. Insurance agencies have seen many things go wrong, which you probably don’t want to think about. However, cancellation insurance covers a wide variety of problems, and you can use it for many reasons.
For example, you can receive benefits in case of sickness, injury or death of you or a traveling companion; dangerous weather at least 48 hours in advance of your trip; recent terrorism in the country to which you’re traveling; in the event of you or a traveling companion losing a job; getting burglarized or assaulted within 10 days of your trip; the bankruptcy of your airline, tour or cruise line; emergency military duty or jury duty; and getting in a traffic accident on your way to your scheduled departure point. Although unlikely, all have occurred before, leaving uninsured travelers with empty pockets, and insured travelers counting their lucky stars.
Travel cancellation insurance doesn’t usually cover events retroactively. Often, the insurance goes into effect at 12:01 a.m. the day after you sign up, including paying the correct amount. If an event on the above list does occur, you need to call the insurance agency as soon as possible to report it. If you don’t call within a certain timeframe – 72 hours, for example – then you could receive reduced benefit payments.
Just how much money will you receive when you have to cancel your trip? When you buy cancellation insurance, you buy it for a specific amount protected, and you will receive up to this amount for any unused, non-refundable, prepaid expenses when you cancel. The exact reimbursement amount depends on the specifics of the plan you bought initially, though you can usually get up to $20,000 or more. Whatever benefits you receive, the insurance cost for them usually wavers around 5-10 percent of the overall cost of your trip. So, for example, if you want to get benefits of $10,000, expect to pay between $500 and $1,000 for insurance, depending on what your policy covers. All travel cancellation insurance policies have different terms, so you should research a little to find the best deal for your trip.
If you’re not sure what type of travel insurance you need, you can find some helpful information at Web sites such as travelinsure.com, which provide numerous services for individuals, families, groups and businesses looking for travel insurance.
By Lisa Zyga