Travel Insurance: Travel Guard

Murphy’s Law is in full effect when traveling or on vacation. Fortunately, you can counteract it with travel insurance, and these are just a few of the coverages typically offered.

Many people who travel a lot know even the most minor annoyances and problems of traveling. Luckily for them travel insurance aims to take some of the sting out of travel problems.

For most travelers, they are concerned about protecting their investment and travel can certainly be a risky investment. Travel insurance is offered for cruises, tours, flights and vacation home rentals and can cover quite a lot, including:

Medical - There is nothing worse than being sick when you are on vacation. Medical travel insurance pays for doctor visits and illnesses that occur during your trip, such as treatment, prescription drugs and laboratory work to diagnose illnesses. Policies cover local ambulance service and emergency medical situations that require surgeries.

Emergency evacuation - This coverage typically includes airlifts from a mountain due to a skiing or hiking accident, or a long-term stay at a foreign hospital. Emergency evacuation also covers a flight home if you became seriously ill or injured. When traveling to a foreign country, bring copies of your medical records with you and consider an evacuation policy in case you develop a serious medical condition.

Baggage delay - If your personal belongings are lost, stolen or damaged during your trip this coverage would replace them.

Accidental death dismemberment - Although nobody wants this to happen to them, this coverage provides compensation if you die or are permanently disabled during a trip. It includes accidental loss of life, limb or sight during your trip other than while flying.

Repatriating a body – Along with accidental death dismemberment, this provides coverage in the event you die while on vacation and your remains have to be transported back to the United States. It can be very costly to have a body repatriated from one country to another, ranging well into the thousands.
Dental - Yes, even dental coverage for travel insurance exists, which covers all emergency dental procedures. You can purchase additional dental coverage to relieve acute dental pain and surgical procedures provided in a hospital.

Collision/damage coverage for rental cars - Provides coverage for physical damage to, or loss of, an automobile rented from a commercial foreign or domestic rental car agency.

Travel delay/trip interruption - This coverage reimburses you for any flight delays from 2 hours up. Some insurance companies will offer total reimbursement of your airline ticket for any delays that exceed 5 hours. In a world full of delays this comes in handy a lot.

Trip cancellation - Trip cancellation provides coverage if your cruise line or tour operator goes out of business, if you must cancel a trip due to sickness, if there is a death in the family, or another event that would prevent you from going on your trip that you’ve already paid for.

When you consider everything that can or does go wrong on vacations, travel insurance seems that much more attractive.