With different coverage limits, add-ons, and exclusions, travel insurance policies vary widely, so it’s essential to compare plans and align coverage with your biggest concerns and risks. A careful review of your options can lead you to policies that both meet your needs and keep your wallet intact.
Learn more: Travel insurance: What it covers, costs, and how to choose the right policy
Step 1: Understand what coverage you need
Step 2: Compare the core coverage categories
Step 3: Look closely at exclusions
Step 4: Compare add-ons and upgrades
Step 5: Evaluate costs the right way
Step 6: Check the claims and assistance process
Step 7: Compare travel insurance vs. credit card protections
The first step is to determine which financial risks you want covered during your trip. You can do this by assessing the type of trip you plan to take and any personal concerns you may have.
International vs. domestic: Your health insurance plan may not cover you in another country, suggesting the need for an insurance policy that provides medical coverage. However, if you plan to stay stateside, you may already have medical insurance through your existing coverage.
Cruises, tours, or independent travel: The type of activities you plan to participate in can help dictate the type of coverage you may want. For example, cruises and tours often have strict cancellation policies, so having trip cancellation or interruption insurance could be essential.
Length and complexity of itinerary: The longer and more complex your itinerary, such as flying multiple times over weeks or months of travel, the greater the likelihood of encountering unforeseen circumstances, including canceled or delayed flights. Compare this with a short and simple itinerary, where the risk of unexpected situations is much lower.
Learn more: Is travel insurance worth it? Here’s when to get travel insurance.
Health considerations: If you’re older or have medical concerns, you may want to include specific coverage or coverage limits in your plan. If you have preexisting medical conditions that could force you to cancel your trip, it’s worth considering policies with preexisting-condition waivers.
Family travel: In general, the more travelers you add to a plan, the more it’s going to cost. You will also need to consider whether certain members of your family require additional coverage for any reason. For instance, if someone has extra health concerns or plans to participate in high-risk sports or activities, you may need supplementary coverage.
Non-refundable costs: If you have high-cost non-refundable bookings, you may want to consider travel insurance solely for trip cancellation and interruption insurance. Otherwise, you may be out a lot of money if you have to cancel or interrupt your trip.
Most travel insurance policies offer similar types of coverage, including trip cancellation and interruption insurance, emergency medical coverage, and medical evacuation and transportation insurance.
As you review these coverages between various insurance providers, consider their differences to find the best option for you. This could include comparing eligible covered reasons, reimbursement limits, exclusions, documentation requirements for claims, and more.
Trip cancellation and interruption
Trip cancellation and interruption insurance covers you if you need to cancel or interrupt your trip for a covered reason. Consider these factors as you compare this coverage:
Covered reasons: You will only be reimbursed for non-refundable expenses if you cancel or interrupt your trip for a covered reason. You want to make sure your policy includes a variety of common covered reasons, including becoming ill or injured before or during your trip. If you have a specific situation in mind, such as the potential birth of a grandchild, you need to check if it’s listed under your policy’s covered reasons.
Reimbursement limits: Higher reimbursement limits are better, but they tend to cost more. Depending on your risk tolerance, you should consider having a high enough limit to cover your non-refundable trip expenses.
Expert tip: Trip cancellation and interruption insurance may have “per policy” or “per insured” limits. For example, if a plan says $5,000 per insured, per year, that’s different from $5,000 per policy, per year.
Emergency medical coverage covers you for eligible medical expenses requiring emergency treatment. Many policies also provide emergency dental coverage. Here are a few factors to consider with this coverage:
Limits and deductibles: At first glance, you’ll notice these coverage limits are higher than trip cancellation and interruption limits. That’s because medical expenses can quickly get expensive, so the higher limits are justified. You should make sure the limit is high enough to give you the peace of mind you need.
Primary vs. secondary coverage: In some cases, a travel insurance policy’s medical coverage may be secondary to your existing health insurance plan. It’s typically a less complicated claims process if the coverage is primary, making it so that you only have to deal with one provider.
Expert tip: If you’re traveling with your family, ensure the coverage is “per insured” rather than “per policy,” so each person gets their own coverage limit.
Medical evacuation and transportation
Medical evacuation and transportation coverage specifically covers evacuation and/or transportation costs related to medical emergencies. For example, if you need to be airlifted to the nearest hospital or put on an emergency flight back to the U.S., this is the type of coverage you’d want in that situation. Here are two important things to keep in mind when it comes to medical evacuation and transportation coverage:
Evacuation caps: Emergency transportation costs can easily reach over $100,000, but could go much higher depending on the situation. It’s not uncommon for this type of coverage to even have limits of $500,000 or more. The amount of coverage you need may depend on where you’re traveling.
Destination considerations: You likely wouldn’t need as much of this coverage if you’re sticking to major cities, as there should be sufficient medical facilities nearby. However, any international trip raises the concern of needing to be transported back home. Traveling to remote areas may also increase your risk.
Expert tip: Not all emergency evacuation and transportation policies include repatriation back to your home country. Read each plan’s terms and conditions carefully if this is an important consideration for you.
Travel delay and baggage
Travel delay and baggage coverage can be separated into multiple categories, including travel delay, baggage loss and damage, and baggage delay.
Travel delay coverage reimburses you for additional expenses incurred as a result of a covered travel delay. Baggage delay is similar, but specifically refers to your baggage being delayed. Baggage loss and damage coverage reimburses you in eligible situations where your baggage and/or personal effects are lost, damaged, or stolen. Here are travel and baggage coverage things to keep front of mind:
Per-day limits: Depending on the coverage, there may be a daily reimbursement limit. For example, you may have a $200 max reimbursement per 24 hours for a covered travel delay, with an overall trip limit of $1,600.
Minimum required timeframes: Pay attention to what constitutes a travel or baggage delay, according to your insurance policy. In most cases, a certain number of hours, such as six or more, must pass before a delay is covered.
Documentation requirements: Keep all the receipts of any items you purchase, such as clothes or food, if you’re involved in a delay. You will likely have to include this documentation when you submit a claim.
Expert tip: Some travel insurance policies include your personal effects in their baggage loss and damage coverage. That means you may have insurance in place if your phone or another item is lost, stolen, or damaged, though it depends on the terms of your policy.
Learn more: What does travel insurance cover, and do I need it?
Reviewing your coverage exclusions is essential to comparing different types of travel insurance. In fact, in many cases, not having certain exclusions on your policy may be more important than the price of the policy.
As an example, let’s say you’re comparing two plans from different insurance providers. One of your specific reasons for looking into travel insurance is to ensure you can cancel your trip if you need to return home for the birth of a family member.
At a high level, you may be drawn immediately to a less expensive policy with sufficient trip cancellation coverage limits. However, when you review the exclusions and covered reasons on both policies, you notice that only one of them, the more expensive policy, includes coverage for births of family members.
In this case, it’s clear which policy makes more sense for your situation.
Here are some factors to keep in mind when reviewing exclusions:
Preexisting condition rules: You typically need a preexisting medical condition exclusion waiver to be covered for preexisting conditions. Only certain providers and plans include this waiver.
Weather and event exclusions: You may be covered for weather and other event-related incidents, but this depends on your policy. In most cases, travel insurance won’t cover anything that’s a result of a foreseeable event, including weather conditions that were known before taking your trip.
Activity exclusions: High-risk sports and activities, such as skydiving and skiing, are often excluded from travel insurance policies unless you have a high-risk sports and activities add-on.
Work-related exclusions: Whether you can cancel a trip for work-related reasons depends on your insurance.
Pandemics or epidemics: It depends on the insurance policy whether pandemics or epidemics are covered. Some policies may view these as known or foreseeable events.
If you can’t find coverage for a specific situation, you may want to consider exploring add-on coverages and upgrades to meet your needs. These are additional types of coverage you can add to your main travel insurance policy for a fee. Common add-ons include:
CFAR coverage lets you cancel your trip for any reason. This means you can cancel your trip and recoup some of your costs, even if the reason you’re canceling isn’t typically covered by travel insurance.
Keep in mind that CFAR insurance will usually only reimburse 50% to 75% of your non-refundable trip expenses, so you won’t get everything back. You also typically have to purchase this optional coverage within a certain timeframe of your initial trip deposit, often around a few weeks.
Because of the risk involved, most standard travel insurance policies won’t cover activities like bungee jumping, skydiving, hang gliding, rock climbing, fighting sports, and more. However, if you want to participate in these or similar activities, many insurance providers offer adventure sports and high-risk-activity add-ons.
Preexisting medical conditions aren’t often covered by standard travel insurance policies unless you have an exclusion waiver for these conditions. This is an optional add-on that you typically have to include soon after your first trip payment.
Cost is one of the most important factors to consider when comparing travel insurance policies, but it’s also just one factor among many. While it’s essential to find a plan that works for your bank account, you should also find a balance between cost and coverage. For example, going for the lowest-priced policy will save you money, but it may not meet all your coverage needs.
Consider these factors as you compare the cost of various policies:
Compare policies with similar limits: If you know your total trip costs, you know around how much trip cancellation and interruption coverage you need. This gives you a starting point for comparing policies with similar limits.
Understand deductibles: Similar to other types of insurance, your travel insurance policy may include deductibles for various types of coverage. In most cases, the lower the deductible, the higher your insurance premium.
Avoid overpaying for overlapping coverage: You may be able to lower the cost of your travel insurance policy if you’re already covered by your existing health insurance policy or through protections offered by a rewards credit card. You may be surprised by how much travel coverage you can get from various credit cards.
Learn more: What does travel insurance cost?
If possible, consider looking beyond the high-level details of your travel insurance policy to review the claims and assistance process. At the very least, this can help you get familiar with contact information and documentation requirements.
Consider these factors:
24/7 assistance services: Does your policy have 24/7 contact information? If so, make sure you save it somewhere, so you aren’t scrambling to find it in an emergency. Remember, there’s often a time limit on how quickly you have to submit a claim, so don’t wait too long.
Documentation requirements: Documentation is how you prove your claim is valid. This could include trip invoices, purchase receipts, medical invoices, attending physician statements, and more. As a general rule of thumb, you should save all your trip receipts and payments.
How reimbursement typically works: You can typically choose between an electronic funds transfer or a paper check for your reimbursement. You may need to provide your bank account information if you choose an electronic funds transfer.
As you compare travel insurance policies, consider whether they overlap with credit card protections.
Many of the best travel credit cards provide various types of travel coverage, including trip cancellation and interruption insurance, baggage delay reimbursement, car rental coverage, and more.
These protections could provide additional protection for your trip or even be enough to stand on their own, depending on your travel plans. However, keep in mind that standalone travel insurance policies tend to have higher coverage limits. You also won’t find much in the way of optional add-ons, such as CFAR coverage or high-risk activity insurance, in your credit card benefits.
Expert tip: In some cases, your credit card coverage may be secondary rather than primary. This means the coverage would only apply after any other insurance you may have, such as personal insurance, is applied first.
Learn more: How credit card travel insurance works
Ignoring exclusions: For whatever reason, you may assume something is covered by travel insurance when it actually isn’t. To avoid this potentially costly assumption, review your policy’s exclusion list.
Assuming all medical coverage is the same: Most travel insurance policies are similar, but their terms and conditions can vary. Just because one policy includes emergency dental coverage doesn’t mean they all do. The same goes for covered medical reasons and coverage limits.
Focusing too much on price: Only researching the least expensive policies could be doing yourself a major disservice if you miss out on essential coverage that doesn’t cost much more.
Waiting too long to purchase a policy: Certain types of coverage have timeframe requirements. This means you have to purchase a specific policy or add-on, such as a preexisting medical condition waiver, within a certain period of time after your first travel purchase.
Relying solely on credit card protections: Travel credit card protections can be useful if you have them, but they may not always provide sufficient coverage for your needs. Ensure you conduct a thorough review of your available options when comparing travel insurance policies.
Consider these questions as you compare travel insurance plans:
Does it cover your biggest financial risks? Having no protection in place is the biggest financial risk if you spend a lot on non-refundable travel bookings. From there, it’s about having sufficient coverage to cover your non-refundable costs and give you adequate peace of mind.
Are the limits high enough for your destination? There’s no standard coverage limit to shoot for with each destination, but you can consider higher or lower limits, depending on average medical costs in the area.
Are key exclusions acceptable? If you want specific situations covered, make sure they’re not excluded by your policy.
Are add-ons worth the extra cost? Not everyone needs to purchase optional coverage, but it can be worth considering if you have unique circumstances.
Is the claims process clear? Hopefully, there’s no need to use travel insurance. Still, you want to make sure you know how to submit a claim, including what documentation you may need if it comes to that.
Price is important, but the cheapest plans may not have the coverage you need. Start your comparison shopping by reviewing coverage limits and exclusions and aligning them with your needs.
Remember to match coverage to your trip costs and risks. If you have unique circumstances, such as preexisting medical conditions, consider purchasing additional optional coverage.
Review the terms and conditions of various policies and become acquainted with their claims processes. The easier the process, the less of a headache you’ll have to endure if you end up needing to submit a claim.
Tim Manni edited this article.
