If you purchase your airfare separately from your tour or cruise, do not buy their travel insurance. Their travel insurance is priced to encourage a quick impulse sale. However, the reason the price is lower is they usually offer fewer benefits and lower coverage.
ROUNDING YOUR TRIP COST DOWN
Rounding your trip costs down when buying insurance might disqualify you from pre-existing medical condition coverage. Most travel insurance plans that offer the “waiver” require that you “insure to value” in order to qualify.
Travel insurance plans that offer coverage for pre-existing medical conditions usually have 3 or more preconditions that you meet in order to qualify for the coverage. One of them requires that the insurance is purchased within the plans required time period following your first trip payment(deposit).
There are many options where you can buy travel insurance. Most travel agents offer travel insurance and almost every tour operator, airline, and cruise line have specially designed travel insurance plans for their clients.
Our best advice is to buy through a third party travel insurance comparison web site and to avoid plans offered by travel agents, tour operators, airlines, or cruise lines. This advice is based on the following research:
That is a question that gets asked everyday. And it's usually an easy answer provided you are talking with an experienced travel insurance agent who is able to guide you to the right company and right plan.
Your beginning point should always be to make sure the plan that you're looking at is being offered by a legitimate company that is backed by a licensed insurance company. Most travelers take this for granted but experiences tells us that you shouldn't. A few years ago there was an unlicensed company that was offering "travel protection" through some very large travel agencies and tour companies located throughout the southeast and went bankrupt when they couldn't pay claims.
“Can I afford to lose the cost of my trip if I have to cancel or interrupt my travel plans? ”
If the answer to that question is no, then you want to buy trip cancellation insurance. But how do you find the right plan? How do you determine the plan that best fits your needs? It’s easy if you follow a 4 step process:
