Tourists planning to head to Greece this summer need to do a little research, but travel insurance protections are still available. Here’s what you need to know:
- ‘civil unrest’ is typically not covered for trip cancellation and trip interruption
- insurers typically exclude ‘known risks’
So, if this sounds like it means you won’t have the option to cancel, think again.
A quick call to two travel insurance providers: Travel Guard and Travelex indicated that if I were planning a trip to Greece and had not yet made a trip payment, I could purchase the ‘Cancel for any reason’ upgrade and have trip cancellation coverage in case things get worse and I decide to bail on my trip.
What’s the rub?
The thing that could rub a traveler the wrong way is the fact that ‘cancel for any reason’ doesn’t always reimburse your trip costs at 100%. In fact, a quick review of two plans revealed:
- Travel Guard’s Platinum plan reimburses 70% of pre-paid non refundable trip costs
- Travelex’s Select plan reimburses 60% of pre-paid non refundable trip costs
Still, getting some of your money back is better than nothing.
How about the details?
All travel insurance ‘cancel for any reason’ coverage comes with a set of rules that must be followed. For example,
- Travel Guard’s website indicates that The Cancel for Any Reason upgrade must be purchased at the same time of base plan and it is only valid if purchased within 15 days of initial trip payment. Coverage must be purchased for the full cost of all prepaid trip arrangements. (text copied from the Travel Guard website)
The warning from Travelex looked like this:
Both companies require you to purchase enough coverage for all non refundable trip costs and cancellation must occur within 48 hours of your scheduled departure – that means cancelling with the airlines, the tour operators, the hotels, and the travel insurance company (so you’ll need to get started early).
What would it cost?
Running through the quote process on the Travelex site, using these basic details:
- Trip dates: 8/18/2011 – 8/25/2011
- Trip destination: Greece
- Trip cost: $4,532.00 (a guess)
- Plan: Travelex Select with the ‘Cancel for any reason’ upgrade
The travel insurance cost for one traveler was:
Not bad for all that coverage.
