I’m looking for good cheap travel insurance. I have a week before I leave for my holiday and I need to get a policy quick! I’m going to write about my experience trying to find a policy that will cover 2 adults for a 36 day trip. It’s a long holiday I know! If you ever have to look for insurance I hope that you can refer to this article and learn from my experience.
For every trip that I take I spend quite a bit of time organizing. I usually do a bit of pre-holiday shopping, get a haircut so I will look good on the beach and make a list of the items I need to pack. Before I start packing I get my travel insurance!
I am going overseas for an extended period of time and I’m hunting for comprehensive travel insurance package to keep me covered for any nasty eventualities on my trip. I like to start the process by writing down a few of the problems I am most worried about on my travel. This can vary on the type of trip that you are doing and the destination that you are going on.
If I was taking a ski holiday I might priorities cover for personal injury or damage to my ski equipment. This trip isn’t an action filled holiday, I might do a bit of snorkeling but my main concerns are:
1- Making sure I get to my destinations and home again in one piece (with all my luggage).
2- Cover for health/accident related problems that might occur.
3 -Having cover for any theft, loss or damage to my possessions while I’m away. Travelling for a month
means that I have a lot of luggage. I don’t want to worry about my precious laptop and camera!
Now that I have a few priorities I’m going to start my search.
Internet comparison websites really do make life a lot easier. I’ve carried out a couple of searches on Confused.com and MoneySuperMarket.com. The lowest prices for a travelling couple on a holiday longer than 30 days is about £40 pounds up to a maximum of £230 pounds for luxury travel insurance! I’m not going to consider the policies as I can see that the luggage cover values are too low.
Later I’ll need to check out the maximum single item cover limit for baggage as expensive single items such as laptops and camera might fall outside of some of these policies.
I’ve decided to use quotes from Confused.com only as I am pushed for time and they offer the largest comparison of insurers at the moment. If I had more time I would look at hitting up MoneySupermarket and others comparison sites as then I could get a larger comparison.
So here are my chosen runners -
TRAVEL INSURER Premium Medical Cancellation Baggage Excess
Travel Insurance Genie £57.20 £10 Mill £2K £1.5K £65
Travel Plan Online £57.50 £10 Mill £5K £1K £100
Swift Cover £62.19 £10 Mill £2K £2K £75
Direct Travel Insurance £72 £10 Mill £3K £1.5K £50
There is a £15 difference between the most expensive and least expensive policies. Looking at them closely it is going to be interesting to see what I can get for my money’s worth.
MEDICAL COVER
Medical cover for all the policies is pretty similar at £10 million. You might think that this is a lot of money but you have to keep in mind that it can be expensive paying for doctors and hospitals when abroad. Just as you don’t get to go to the Grand Canyon for free the US aren’t going to pay for your stay at the local hospital. Breaking your leg in other part so the Continent can be very expensive especially if you have to abandon your holiday and pay for alternative transport home.
CANCELLATIONS
UK weather has been pretty temperamental recently. I am not counting on a nice day for my departure so I’m keeping one eye on the forecast in case I have to set out a few hours early to make it to the airport. I haven’t noticed too many news items about flight cancellations but another bout of snow and ice could make trains and buses a trial. To be sure I want a decent amount of cover for cancellations.
Travel Plan Online has the largest provision for cancellations of the four with £5000. The first leg of our trip London to LA and I don’t think that a replacement flight would cost more that £2000. If you are planning on travelling business or first class you would need to have a higher cover amount for cancellations. For my purposes £2000 is just fine as my flights for the whole trip didn’t cost that much!
So looking at the competition so far the policies are level pegging, price aside.
BAGGAGE
It is difficult making a figure for the value of your suitcase contents…especially when I haven’t packed yet! Having written a list of what I will pack I think that if I lost all of my clothes, toiletries, camera, laptop and other gadgets I would be looking at over a £1000 to replace everything. The policies under investigation cover between £1000 and £2000 for baggage. So at the baggage hurdle Travel Plan Online has tripped up and fallen out of the race!
As Travel Plan Online didn’t provide a high enough value on baggage I am casting them aside. Interestingly enough Travel Plan Online had the highest excess £25 -£50 more than their competitors. If a customer have to make a claim for contents over £1000 the maximum pay out would amount to only £900!
Something to keep in mind for later is whether the survivors provide cover as new for old or 2nd hand value.
EXCESS
So the competition is down 3 insurers now with excesses ranging between £50 and £75. At this early stage I’m not swayed towards any one company so I’ll consider excess later in the piece if the running is close between contenders.
JUDGEMENT SO FAR
Here is my competition table after looking at the basic offers from comparison tables.
TRAVEL INSURER Premium Medical Cancellation Baggage Excess
Travel Insurance Genie £57.20 £10 Mill £2K £1.5K £65
Swift Cover £62.19 £10 Mill £2K £2K £75
Direct Travel Insurance £72 £10 Mill £3K £1.5K £50
I’ve considered price and checked if my basic requirements for travel insurance would be covered.
Travel Plan Online has been crossed out of the competition as in hindsight they would not be able to cover the whole value of my baggage.
If I had to pick a winner at this point it would be Travel Insurance Genie. Based on the bare facts their price is good, they offer a decent amount of medical cover, pretty good cancellation and baggage cover amounts too with a competitive excess at £65.
Next I want to do some research into the service and history of these companies and see if I can dig up any dirt on their performance! Stay tuned for more on my adventures shopping for travel insurance.
Archive for the ‘Travel Insurance’ Category
Pack Your Bags! Get Some Travel Insurance With Me
Tuesday, March 9th, 2010Annual Travel Insurance -for Whom, You are Waiting?
Wednesday, February 17th, 2010Yes, for whom, you are waiting, Going for a trip and confuse, should I take travel insurance or not? But now, it is not a big issue! You can purchase your travel insurance online. Although it may be a big issue that you are not very much clear about Travel insurance. Travel insurances categorized mostly in two category, Long term and Short term. I am going to describe Long term Travel insurances in this article .For short term article wait for my next article.
Annual travel insurance is one of the examples of long term travel insurance. If you are going for a long vacation, I mean for one year or about one year than you can go for annual travel insurance. The main feature of the travel insurance provider company , you should know what you are purchasing and with whom you are dealing .Make sure it is a trust able and registered company. Make sure to compare all the policies available to you. Compare not only the benefits but also the costs and the companies issuing the Policies. You should be careful while purchasing travel insurance because after purchasing an unreliable insurance you can only blame your self not any other.
Accidents do happen and you can not be certain when they will or they would not be called accidents. Annual travel insurance is very sound investment .It is a very wise decision indeed to try to prevent an accident from ruining a trip that you have planned as long as you can afford the insurance. First search, and than purchase right Annual trip travel insurance. Although you are not sure about the accidents but one thing is sure that you will enjoy your trip with out any unlike thing.
Why Travel Insurance is a Must
Wednesday, February 17th, 2010Travel insurance is necessary for your vacation packages and without it all your travel dreams cannot come true. Travel insurance is essential for a traveler as it covers your medical and financial expenses and losses incurred on your domestic or international travel. It’s usually arranged at the time of booking the trip and covers the exact duration of the trip.
Many travel agents offer insurance, as part of their travel packages but it will be worth for you if you arrange it on your own through an online source. You can search for a good insurance policy and choose between single and multi trip insurances. If you plan to travel once in a year, then travel insurance of single trip policy will be suitable. But if you have plans to travel frequently then you can consider taking multi trip insurance policy. Continuous insurance can be bought from travel agents, travel suppliers like tour operators, cruise lines and companies offering travel insurance.
A multi trip insurance policy is commonly referred as annual insurance travel policy and can save big money in the long run. While arranging for insurance policies for travel, be clear with what the insurance coverage is provided along with the inclusions and exclusions. Always remember to look at other things also if you look for a compromise between your travel insurance coverage and the premium to be paid. Never assume that a policy with cheap premium will not offer good insurance coverage. This may work in reverse also. A policy taken at a higher price need not cover all aspects of insurance coverage required by you.
As a traveler you face lot of problems and risks while traveling like loss of property and money, trip cancellation, natural calamities, accidents, occasionally death and terrorist attacks. You cannot prevent these risks or stop your travel plan but you can reduce the risk involved by taking travel insurance policies.
The concept of travel insurance is very simple. You pay a travel insurance premium to the company and they in turn covers for your loss of valuables, accidents and unforeseen things.
The premium you pay for travel insurance covers risks faced on travel like:
There are lots of possibilities for trip cancellation due to unavoidable circumstances and last minute cancellation will fetch you very less amount as refund. Your travel insurance covers such losses and provides the cancellation cost but the reason for cancellation must be part of the agreement you have signed with the company.
If you lose your baggage then the insurance company pays for the baggage cost but again based on the rules of your insurance contract. A travel insurance policy sometimes covers your medical expenses if incurred while traveling. But if you have got health insurance separately then you don’t have to spend again for health insurance during travel.
Generally travel insurance covers other things like accidental death, medical evacuation etc.
An important golden rule of all insurance policies is to go through the agreement carefully because most of the time you apply for insurance policies during emergencies.
Travel insurance is offered with various options for different types of travelers like student, business, adventure, international and leisure travelers. Travel insurance is also offered for participating in sports involving high risk and traveling to certain countries which have a high risk.