Clearing a recent misconception about trip cancellation insurance

A recent article titled “7 Insurance Policies You Can Live Without” caught our attention because the content significantly misrepresented trip cancellation insurance as not worth the cost.

The author writes: â€œIf you can’t make it to a flight because something came up at work or a pre-existing medical condition, you won’t get your money back if you bought a trip cancellation policy. On most of the trip cancellation policies, the reasons that will get you a refund are pretty extreme — you or a family member has to suffer from an illness, injury, death, natural disaster. Unless you invested a lot of money in the trip, you might want to skip this policy.”

We beg to differ – and not just for really expensive trips.

Travel insurance policies cover trip cancellation for a number of covered reasons and you will get your money back if the reason is covered. See our article on the covered reasons for trip cancellation.

Of course, not every single travel insurance plan has the same covered reasons. It’s important for you to review the policy so you understand what is covered and what is not.

Here’s a policy example. Let’s say two 40+ year-olds from Colorado are traveling to New Orleans for a weekend. They paid a combined total of $1,200 for their airline tickets and hotel. When we run these facts through our travel insurance comparison tool, several inexpensive – that is, less than $90 – travel insurance policies with generous covered reasons for trip cancellation popped up. Those policies include trip cancellation, interruption, medical expenses, and evacuations too, so you get an awful lot of coverage with your trip cancellation.

Now, the author is correct if you are counting on your credit card protection for trip cancellation coverage. There’s where the covered reasons are rather extreme.