• You can buy it with your airline ticket. Read why we don’t recommend that.
• You can buy it through your cruise line. Read why we don’t recommend that either.
• You can buy it from your travel agent. Read why we sometimes don’t recommend that either.

All those methods aside, here’s why buying your travel insurance online is still the best way to go:

1. The Internet is still the undisputed king of information.

When you research your trip, you do it online because the amount of information at your fingertips makes this a smart way to search for virtually anything. The same goes for travel insurance. Here at Travel Insurance Review, you’ll find reviews from actual travelers, comparisons of different products, and the latest news and information for travelers.

2. A comparison engine makes buying travel insurance simple

When you use a travel insurance comparison engine, you can customize your coverage for pre-existing conditions, coverage limits, and add options like rental car coverage, adventure sports coverage, coverage for your pets, and more. Plus, your travel insurance needs are put through an engine that gives you multiple providers and let’s you compare costs, coverage limits, and options all in once place.

3. You get access to all the best travel insurance companies, not just a few

One vital thing you miss when you purchase travel insurance with your airline ticket or from your travel agent is options. In most cases, an airline booking engine gives you one travel insurance provider, so you’re not even getting a useful price comparison. Most travel agencies focus on one or two travel insurance providers, not the entire spectrum, so again you’re losing out. Smarter shopping requires adequate comparison and the travel insurance comparison engine gives you just that.

4. You can see your travel coverage documents immediately and contact the assistance services representatives

Now, you can see your travel coverage documents immediately when you buy your plan with your airline ticket too, but do you read the details? It’s not likely. You’re focused on getting that ticket and you may not remember to read those documents. When you purchase your travel insurance online, you get the travel documents sent to your e-mail address. You can review them and call the assistance services representatives to ask questions and better understand your coverage or get clarification on the ‘fine print’.

We decided to look into this scenario to find out how travelers can protect themselves. Remember, if you’ve planned a B&B stay, your trip may involve flight costs as well as other pre-paid trip costs, which may or may not be able to be cancelled for a refund. So, when we are speaking about one portion of your trip being destroyed by a fire, i.e., the bed and breakfast, it’s important to recognize that there are other trip costs covered by your trip cancellation coverage.

To start, we researched to find a plan with trip cancellation that included fire in the description of coverage. We quickly found that trip cancellation with Worldwide Trip Protector Gold from Travel Insured International is allowed in this instance:

Natural Disaster at the site of Your destination which renders Your destination accommodations uninhabitable.

… and we further read into the policy definitions to ensure that ‘natural disaster’ included fire and found:

“Natural Disaster” means flood, fire, hurricane, tornado, earthquake, volcanic eruption, blizzard or avalanche that is due to natural causes.

So, at least this plan would allow you to cancel your entire trip in the instance your destination B&B is destroyed – and rendered unhabitable – by a fire.

A word of caution: if the innkeeper gives you a refund for your payment, that amount will be taken out of the amount reimbursed by your travel insurance company, which makes sense.  In many cases, the innkeeper can re-book your stay with a partner inn, and in that case you will not have a covered reason to cancel your trip.

The plan we discussed here is just one plan with this type of coverage. There are many other travel insurance plans that will cover your trip costs if you have to cancel your travel plans due to an inn fire, so if that type of protection is important to you, it’s crucial that you carefully review the description of coverage and remember that the destination lodging must be rendered uninhabitable.

See a full review of bed and breakfast or inn travel insurance.

1. Carry less to show you have less to steal than others around you. A single small backpack (wear it on your front in crowded areas) means you are more agile and have your hands free. If you don’t look like you have anything useful to steal, thieves will move on to better targets.
2. Similar to number 1: dress to fit in, not to impress. Flashing expensive clothing, cameras, jewelry or luggage is a sure way to draw attention to yourself – unwanted attention. The kind of attention that identifies you as a target for thieves.
3. Avoid high-risk areas. When you get to a new place, you’ll want a map. Visit an official tourist office to get a map and ask the person on duty to highlight the areas you should avoid. If you can, try to verify those highlights with the clerk at your hotel too (just in case the person at the tourist office is less than honest).
4. Don’t require the use of your phone in remote areas. Where coverage may be limited, your phone’s battery will drain much quicker. If your phone dies or breaks, you’ll want alternative means of getting around and finding what you need to find (think paper maps and hand-written notes).
5. Don’t panic in an emergency. If your plane has to make an emergency landing, or you encounter a civil riot, or you leave something important in a taxi, panicking is only going to make things work. Understand what ‘brace for impact’ means, stay away from civil demonstrations because as peaceful as they look at the start, they can quickly become violent, and take your time exiting a taxi.
6. Tell someone where you’re going. If you’re going off the grid for a time, let a friend or family member back home know where you’re going (as specifically as possible) and when you plan to return. Also, let them know who to contact if they don’t hear from you when they are supposed to. National parks usually have a ranger station where it’s useful to check in and out, for example. Friendly innkeepers are usually happy to note when you are expected to return and call for help if you don’t return when you should.
7. Be prepared. Take the time to think about and research the risks for your destination and be prepared. The risks you face can be as simple as loss of power in your hotel on a short weekend trip to New York City. See our tips for what should be in your travel emergency travel kit. For a remote adventure, see our list of essential travel products for off-the-grid trips.

Of course, we also recommend you think carefully about and purchase travel insurance for your trip. If you’re not sure what you need, see our Travel Insurance 101.

Last year, a 72-year-old traveler from Florida went to Torremolinos, Spain for a two-month vacation. This traveler purchased an annual plan from HTH: TravelGap Multi-trip Silver (a plan that covers travelers up to age 84 and includes coverage for pre-existing medical conditions). During his trip, he experienced dizziness and suffered a loss of consciousness. He was admitted to a local hospital for diagnosis and treatment.

While this particular hospital did not have a contract with HTH, the administrators agreed to invoice HTH for the traveler’s medical care. After two weeks in hospital, the attending physician released the patient to return to the U.S. but because he was disoriented (due to his condition of Alzheimer’s), the doctor and the HTH team agreed that a nurse would be necessary to ensure he could travel safely. After his hospital discharge, the traveler was medically evacuated to the U.S. accompanied by a nurse and traveled in business class. He was admitted to a local hospital in Florida and placed under the care of his family physician.

HTH arranged for and paid for all the hospital charges in Spain, including the air flight home and nurse escort (image below copied from the HTH flyer).

What can we learn from this traveler’s experience?

A lot of travelers give travel insurance a bad rap because they believe it should cover them in all travel emergencies, but as we’ve shown in this story, travel insurance is sometimes the best purchase a traveler can make.

Unfortunately, travelers typically fail to read their plan’s description of coverage and so they don’t know exactly what their coverage includes and they make assumptions about their coverage. Often, we find that travelers take the easy road, simply purchasing any old travel insurance plan offered to them in the check out process, and then get angry when it doesn’t have the kind of coverage they need.

If you’ve been let down by travel insurance in the past, please review our 5 Common “Loopholes” and How to Avoid Them to better understand how travel insurance works and how to purchase the right travel insurance for your needs.

This traveler had already paid for the airline portion of their trip. Later, they noticed a price drop and negotiated for a better ticket price. The airline gave this traveler a credit to be used toward future travel, not a discount on the current trip.

This traveler had already purchased their travel insurance as well, was within their free look period and wanted to know if they should reduce their trip cost to account for the future credit.

Why was this savvy traveler concerned? Because they had purchased travel insurance with a pre-existing condition waiver and cancel for any reason coverage – both of which require the traveler to purchase coverage for the entire non refundable charges of their trip. If their trip cost was now reduced, this traveler wanted to be sure their coverage was correct.

In this case, however, because the airline credit was toward future travel and not the currently insured trip, the traveler should not reduce their trip cost.

Had the airline issued an immediate credit on the current trip, then the traveler could lower their insured trip cost to avoid paying for more coverage than they needed.

Personal Health Survival Strategies

The following are the top personal health survival strategies for the 2011 holiday season:

1. To avoid big weight gain, focus on maintaining a healthy weight not excessive weight loss. Starting a new diet on January 1st is one option, but it’s not the best option. Focus on maintaining a normal, healthy weight all year long so you don’t have to go through drastic measures in the new year.
2. Enjoy the foods you like – in moderation. No single meal and no single type of food will make you instantly overweight – it’s the accumulation of to many calories too often that does it. Denying yourself your favorite foods is not way to effect a health eating pattern. So, enjoy the foods you like in smaller portions. Savor them slowly and you’ll not only get more out of the enjoyment, you’ll enjoy consuming less.
3. Keep moving through the holidays. With the colder weather, traveling to visit friends and family, and the huge number of commitments, it can be hard to keep your exercise schedule on track. Find ways to sneak in exercise. Craving a long talk with your mother or son? Lace up your shoes, bundle up, and take it outside. You’ll find that the movement will help you focus and enjoy the time with your favorite person and you’ll get a calorie burn besides!
4. Implement smart drinking strategies in addition to smart eating strategies. The human body can’t store alcohol until it has metabolized it. That means your before dinner drink gets metabolized first, then the food you eat. If the body has all the calories it needs right now, the food gets stored as fat. Enjoying a light cocktail with dinner helps the body get the nutrients it needs from the food first. Alternating each drink with two glasses of water helps your liver de-toxify too.

Travel Survival Strategies

Crowded airplanes, lack of service, weather delays, and tired, angry people all contribute to needing a holiday travel survival strategy. The following are the top holiday travel tips for 2011:

1. Make copies of your travel documents and credit cards. If you are robbed or lose your wallet, passport, and other travel documents, you can rely on the copies to help you replace them. Keep one copy in your checked or carry-on luggage and leave one copy with friends or family back home (you can call them if your copy is also stolen).
2. Get there early – really early. Airports can be dull and most people avoid them until they really have to be there, but arriving early gives you the lead time you may just need when the security line gets blocked by someone who hasn’t kept up on the current TSA holiday travel tips.
3. Be nice – even when it’s hard. Your niceness in a sticky, tense situation can have a calming effect on those who are standing by and potentially diffuse the situation.
4. Carry your bag on board – or even better, ship it ahead! FedEx and UPS have decent tracking systems that can help you track the progress of your bag. They’ll even insure it (the airlines won’t). So send everything you can ahead and pack light. You’ll save on airline baggage fees, hassle, and worry.
5. Load up your electronics with plenty of entertainment. This will help tide you over when there are travel delays.
6. Remember where you parked the car. This is especially true during the holidays when you may be sleepy or distracted when you park, then have trouble finding it when you return some days or weeks later. See our tips for finding your parked car.

Of course, having the right travel insurance can help you travel safely without incurring a big financial loss too. See what travel insurance covers and what it doesn’t; then, read our tips for saving money on your travel insurance plan.

At Travel Insurance Review, we’re here to explain travel insurance to consumers. It’s not our intent to push travel insurance, but to help consumers determine their risks and get the coverage they need. No traveler wants to spend more than they have to on stuff like travel insurance and we don’t want you to have coverage that’s unnecessary.

That being said, there is no such thing as ‘essential coverage for every travel insurance plan’. It’s simply not true. In fact, we’ve written a whole page listing when travel insurance is just not necessary.

A few examples:

• If you’re traveling inside the U.S., have adequate medical coverage, and a little money in the bank for out-of-network medical care, then you may not need travel medical coverage.
• If you have plenty of time on your trip and no hard schedule in mind, you can better accommodate travel delays. You may not be happy about it, but if you’ve got friends in town, you won’t be out a great deal of money and you could even have some unexpected fun with the delay.
• If you plan to carry your bag, stow it on the plane yourself, and not leave it alone, you probably don’t need baggage coverage – especially if you can afford to purchase what you need when you arrive.

Travel insurance is relatively cheap insurance against truly awful travel scenarios that can cost you a great deal of money like these:

• Your child, wife, brother, or father is hospitalized and you want to cancel your trip to be there for them.
• A ruthless hurricane destroys the resort where you planned to stay.
• Your boss cancels your leave and you are facing the loss of thousands of dollars in non refundable travel payments.
• You are in a horrific bus crash and need medical care you can’t afford without insurance.
• Your checked luggage goes to Spain but you’re headed to Hawaii with nothing but a credit card in your pocket.
• Some jerk breaks into your car and steals the briefcase containing your passport before an overseas trip.
• You have a heart attack on a cruise and need to be medically evacuated to a qualified hospital.

So, please stop listening to the scare tactics, take a little time to determine the risks you’re facing on your trip, and compare travel insurance plans, coverage, and price with our travel insurance comparison tool. You’ll have just what you need without spending a lot of extra money.

According to the report, nearly 1/3 of respondents indicated they did not know if their existing health insurance plan would cover their medical expenses if they became ill or got injured while traveling outside their home country. A recent horrific story of one 79-year-old traveler injured in Mexico proves the need for travel insurance.

We know travelers are becoming increasingly aware of their liability and risks when they travel, and travel insurance can provide the coverage you need for peace of mind and financial security when you travel.

Simply focusing on the medical and evacuation needs of travelers (i.e., ignoring baggage delays, volcano eruptions, flight cancellations, etc.), here are the facts:

1. Your home health insurance coverage does not usually extend to care received outside the network and not outside the country (although some plans will allow you to submit claims to be considered and at times paid).
2. Medicare and Medicaid do not extend to care received while you are outside the country.
3. Medical care outside the country is often pre-paid, meaning the traveler must pay up front to receive care.
4. The cost to transport an injured or ill traveler out of a country where they can receive quality health care can be very high (as much as $100,000 or more).
5. The cost to transport the remains of a traveler who has died to their home country is also high (as high as $40,000 or more) and the effort can require a great deal of inter-country negotiations and regulations.
6. Traveling in a foreign country, where you don’t understand the local language, can mean additional difficulty.

The right travel insurance plan can:

• Arrange for pre-payments to the hospital where the traveler has been transported.
• Coordinate and pay for a traveler’s evacuation out of the foreign country back home or to a country with better medical facilities.
• Coordinate and pay for the return of a traveler’s remains.
• Deliver translation services and monitor communication between the medical staff in one country with the traveler’s friends and family back home.
• Return children who are traveling with the injured or ill traveler back home – with a caregiver, if necessary.
• Transport a friend or family member to the injured or ill traveler so they have someone they know nearby.

Travel insurance plans are relatively inexpensive when you look at the financial loss you could incur on vacation. Many plans are available for as little as $40-$60 depending on the coverage, your age, and destination. See our travel insurance comparison tool and enter a few trip details to get the prices. Be sure to carefully review your plan so you understand the coverage too.

We’ve written before about the long-term effects on tourism after a natural disaster, but one Swiss man has decided to take matters in his own hands and prove to foreigners that it’s safe to travel in Japan.

Thomas Koehler, a former travel agent from Switzerland, is walking across Japan to encourage people to visit the country, and he’s blogging as he goes. You can review his blog (not yet available in English translation) and read more about his story (in English). His trip is self-funded and he’s been traveling about 20-30 KM per day.

Related posts

• Radiation fears are not covered without ‘cancel for any reason’
• Travel insurance companies explain post-earthquake coverage for Japan
• Headed to Japan to aid relief efforts?

These days, travelers have to be aware of hidden fees imposed by just about everyone, and they can really add up quickly!

When you stay at a hotel

Hotels have begun imposing resort fees, which are extra per-day charges tacked onto your hotel bill. Unfortunately, this is another example of simply gouging customers because most travelers have no idea what services they are getting (if any) for these extra fees and hotels aren’t required to pre-disclose them. Plus, the traveler pays taxes on the fees on top of everything else.

When you rent a car

Rental car companies may not tell you about airport fees, which can be $10, $15, or more per day. You won’t be aware of these fees unless you do some research because they’re charged to your card when you return the car and not before.

When you see a game

Ticketing fees and convenience fees are being added to sporting events, as well as a new fee called a delivery fee, which is added to your charge to print the ticket or send it in an e-mail.

When you find a great airfare

Some time ago, we wrote about online airfare purchase websites catching travelers by surprise by automatically adding travel insurance to their purchase, and apparently passenger outcry has prompted at least one company, Travelocity, to implement opt-out so that the checkbox is not already clicked when you make your purchase. This change won’t occur until January 2012, however, so be cautious when making travel supplier purchases until that time.

Note: here at Travel Insurance Review, we encourage you to purchase your travel insurance from an independent, third-party because you have greater control over your coverage, you can add necessary options, and you can compare plans to select the best price.