How can you skip travel insurance? What is its usefulness ?

How can you skip travel insurance ?What is its usefulness ? 

Why do I need travel insurance?

While we all love to get away from it all, accidents do happen – as well as medical bills, travel insurance covers, delays, lost items and thefts. All these can prove costly if you’re not properly insured. 

Almost 1 in 4 people don’t take out travel insurance for their holidays. However, they probably should have, when you consider that travel insurance providers paid out £370m in 591,000 claims last year, according to the Association of British Insurers (ABI). 

To give you some idea of the potential costs without insurance for emergency medical care, the ABI has examples of what has been paid in 2017 for claims that you’d have to pay if you had no insurance:

- £768,000 was paid to cover the medical costs of treating a traveller who suffered a stroke in the USA. This includes £60,000 for an air ambulance back to the UK.

- £125,000 to pay for surgery following a jet-ski accident while holidaying in Turkey

- £136,000 for treating complications following an insect bite in Chile. This included paying for a nurse to escort the traveller home.

So, whether you’re taking the family to the beach, a student on your gap year taking the trip of a lifetime or simply making the most of your retirement, there’s sure to be a policy to keep you covered. 

How can you skip travel insurance?

Note Do not switch insurance on travel, but look for a good company to insure on your trip. I do not know what will happen while traveling.

The Importance of Travel Insurance

Have you ever considered the need for travel insurance? If you are among the people that think trip insurance is just a waste of money, you better have a rethink. Actually, the reason why some people think they don’t need travel insurance is simply because of ignorance. Probably, they don’t know what the insurance cover. An average American will be ready to save towards his vacation trip. But if you suggest the need to buy travel insurance, he will think that the insurance company is trying to force its product on him. I will say that buying travel insurance is as important as the trip itself. I like the way someone put it. ”If you can’t afford travel insurance, then you can’t afford to travel”, the person said. It is that serious.

Has it ever occurred to you that travelling involves risks? The risk is not just limited to the possibility of getting involved in an accident. Certain events can happen that will make a trip unpleasant or even force you to cancel the trip. This might result to the loss of the money you have paid for your flight tickets and accommodation. With the current happenings around the world, you will agree with me that there is nothing like certainty again. For instance, let’s consider the flooding that happened at Texas recently. Many houses were almost submerged thereby leading to the need to urgently evacuate the residents. You can imagine what would have happened to a family of five who had scheduled to have their vacation to the city during that period. They must have booked for their flights and accommodation ahead. Even though the hotel confirmed that the flood did not affect their facilities, the family would most likely cancel the trip. What a loss of investment!

Benefits of Travel Insurance

Travel Insurance provides cover against travel risks such as :

Loss of luggage: If your luggage is lost, damaged or stolen, your travel insurance will cover this. 

This means that such items will be replaced at the expense of your insurer.

 Some people will claim that they can always travel with less items that they can buy on their own, thereby, avoiding the cost of travel insurance.

 But the truth is that, if you think you can afford to replace any stolen luggage of yours, it means that you can as well afford to pay for the travel insurance premium. 

This will give you additional peace of mind in case your luggage is lost.

 Besides the travel insurance policy will cover other things. Nevertheless, it is important that you understand the need for you to take adequate care of your belongings.

 If you lost your luggage due to your own carelessness, you should not expect any reimbursement for this. 

For instance, if you leave your laptop in a vehicle overnight in an unsafe place, that will be regarded as negligence on your part.

 You will be personally responsible for the loss.

 Also, while buying your travel insurance policy, you need to be clear about which of your belongings will be cover. 

Some insurance companies will put a cap to the value of luggage they will cover. 

That means they may not cover one hundred per cent of your luggage loss. Also, certain items may not be covered at all. 

Therefore, you need to find out what is excluded in your travel insurance policy. 

In case you plan to travel with expensive items with you such as laptop, smartphone, tablet and camera, it will be better that your policy covers their full replacement value.

Trip cancellation: Apart from the example of Texas flooding mentioned above, certain events may make you cancel your trip. Such events include sudden illness, accident or death of a close relation, adverse weather, strike action, technical issue or financial default of the travel company may arise.

 If you have paid for your flight tickets and hotel accommodation, you may lose the non-refundable aspects of the fees. 

But in order to enjoy reimbursement from the insurance company, you will be expected to buy your travel insurance policy immediately you pay for your flight tickets and hotel accommodation,

Trip curtailment: You might plan to spend two weeks on a vacation but there may be an occurrence of event that will make you cut short the duration of the vacation.

 Your insurer may