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Travel Insurance is a MUST for any Holiday/Vacation!

Congratulations! You've booked your next holiday and can almost feel the heat of the Caribbean sun on your skin, or the wind through your hair as you skydive in Dubai. Maybe you can hear the Oompah band playing at Oktoberfest over the crowd of revellers or perhaps you're more into the teeth-chatteringly cold temperatures that come from scaling mountains in Nepal. In any case, it's likely you've invested a pretty penny on flights, accommodation, and other reservations. And you're not alone. More and more people are travelling both from and to the UK, with the latest statistics indicating that UK residents spent £4.5 billion overseas just in June 2019.

Sure, you may have checked the little box that charged you a small fee for insuring your flight. But there are so many other things that can go wrong, other than simply having to change a flight; you may be a victim of petty theft for instance, or perhaps contract a particularly nasty bug, both of which can happen with much more frequency than you'd expect and none of that is covered under the flight protection you may have already purchased.

Enter Travel Insurance

Now, many travellers who are trying to keep costs down don't take separate insurance...but if you're already spending a mint, will investing a little bit extra really make that much of a difference, especially when weighed against the potential cost of rebooking or hospital bills in a foreign country? If you're still not convinced, though, here are the top five reasons to purchase separate travel insurance:

1. You can't afford to lose your booked trip - Most people simply don't have the budget to rebook their whole trip, what with accommodations, flights, activities, and rentals. Most travel insurance policies allow consumers to cancel for any covered reason , even if they were technically non-refundable trip costs.

2. Medical emergencies in other countries can get really expensive, really quickly - Urgent care services during foreign travel can add up shockingly fast - especially for travel in the United States, the world's costliest destination for emergency medical care, with visits averaging £4,726.

3. Minor situations can turn into big headaches - Say you miss a connecting flight, or your luggage gets delayed, or your booked tour gets cancelled...travel insurance is there to help. Travel delay benefits can reimburse you for extra, last-minute travel expenses, and baggage delay benefits can reimburse you for reasonable purchases (toothbrushes!, a pair of clean underwear!, and so on).

4. Thieves don't take vacations - While we don't want to fearmonger or accuse any person or nationality of being pickpockets, it is a fact of life that no matter where you travel, theft is always a possibility. And if the stolen items include your passport, your problems may just be starting. While travel insurance won't help you expedite the process of getting a new, valid id, it can help cover the cost of identity theft and having your wallet stolen.

5. Governments may have limited power to help - As a bonus, we'd like to include one last reason - embassies, usually the first port of call for a traveller with an emergency, have fairly limited ability to help. They can replace a missing passport, help you call friends or family in your home country, or offer legal assistance. But an embassy won't help with financial loss or cover emergency transportation, (except in the very rare case of a national emergency). That's why the U.S. State Department recommends that people get travel insurance, especially one that includes urgent care medical benefits and transportation.

Caveat - A Word to the Wise Whether it's at Oktoberfest, the Haro Wine Battle, or Ibiza - we think it's pretty safe to say that alcohol is being consumed, likely in large gulps, quaffs, and swigs. While travel insurance can be helpful and a lifeline in many different situations, if you're going on a particularly alcohol-fueled trip, your policy may use that as reasoning to refuse payouts. It's called an alcohol exclusion clause. However, not every accident will be rejected outright just because you had a glass of wine (or two, or five). The Financial Ombudsman Service indicates that the burden of proof for showing that the exclusion applies falls on the insurer, not the consumer. And the standard for that is pretty high - usually requiring blood alcohol tests, or proof that's consistent with other evidence. So, make sure to read the fine print on your policy, and know your rights, in case you do need to make a claim.

Posted: 18 December 2019 11:15:36 GMT by Mark
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