In another story, this time from the UK, we are reminded that our travel insurance will not provide benefits for injuries sustained while intoxicated.

Many travelers purchase insurance for their vacations. The travel insurance provides benefits for cancelled or interrupted trips, lost baggage, and medical expenses. As with all insurance policies, there are exclusions. Policy exclusions are circumstances under which an insurance will not pay a claim.

Common travel insurance exclusions include:

• self-inflicted injuries
• injuries resulting from dangerous activities like skydiving, etc
• injuries suffered while committing a felony or illegal activity
• injuries suffered while intixicated

Trip insurance is meant to cover expenses for unexpected and accidental injuries. When you consume too much alcohol it is not exactly an accident when you fall down and hurt yourself.

It is common knowledge that alcohol affects our judgement and motor skills. Drivers are arrested everyday for consuming too much alcohol and operating a vehicle. When drinking and driving, they are at a higher risk of injury to themselves and others.

For this same reason, travel insurance companies will not pay for injuries suffered while intoxicated. If they did, trip insurance premiums would be higher and travelers would have to pay more to protect themselves and their financial investement.

Related Posts
Story from Manchester Evening News

A travel insurance company is selling a “Tee, Tour, and Travel” plan that pays your bar tab if you get a hole-in-one.

The next time you and your friends plan a golf getaway, consider covering your trip expenses with Travel Guard’s “Tee, Tour, and Travel” plan. The plan covers trip cancellation expenses, lost baggage and golf equipment, lost greens fees due to bad weather, and pays your celebration bar tab if you get a hole-in-one.

There is small print, as usual, but this plan offers the standard trip coverage with some special modifications for golfers.

The TravelInsuranceReview.net Feedback Fourm is an eBay style way for consumers to provide reviews for travel insurance companies. It is quick, easy, and most importantly, effective.

Here’s how it works:

1. Go to TravelInsuranceReview.net and select Feedback Forum
2. Enter the name of the company you are reviewing
3. Select one of 3 Feedback choices
• Positive
• Neutral
• Negative
4. Provide a short comment

It’s really that simple.

Again, just think of eBay and how easy it is to give and recieve Feedback. The eBay Feedback system would not work as well if they allowed long narratives or complicated reviews. They keep it simple with positive, neutral, or negative…and a short line of comments.

Why do the same for travel insurance? So people use it. By making it simple, fast, and effective people will use it, and provide other shoppers with some basic information about their potential choice. Epinions has some reviews for trip insurance, but less than a dozen.

Writing a narrative review like those on Epinions is complicated, time consuming, and subjective. That is why there are only a few of them, a fraction of a percent of the travel insurance buying market.
Imagine having several thousand “votes” in the Feedback Forum giving you some idea of where to start your search for travel insurance. Some companies would move to the top, while others would not. The people have spoken.

Here are the 3 top ways travelers find trip insurance:

1. Referral A friend, relative, or co-worker directs you to a company they have used and liked
2. Travel Agent When booking your vacation, a travel agent mentions insurance and offers you a travel insurance option
3. Online Search Go to Google, type in “travel insurance”, and start clicking

Referrals from friends, family, or co-workers
Trusted advice from friends, family, and co-workers is always a comfortable way to make any decision. If everything went well for them, you figure it will for you too. The only problem, especially with something like medical insurance, is that everyone has different needs. Maybe they found the right company for themselves, but it may not be the right choice for you.

Travel Agencies
This is a very commmon way to begin the travel coverage process, because here in the US most travelers do not even think about travel insurance (only around 30% of US travelers purchase coverage, compared with over 90% in other countries)

You book your trip with a travel agent, and at some point they probably offer travel insurance. Some agencies offer their own line of products, and others simply obtain an insurance license allowing them to be an insurance agent selling insurance products. They make a commission from insurance sales because they are an insurance agent.

This is why most travel experts will advise against buying your travel insurance from your travel agent. A travel agent might have a deal with a particular insurance company, with the incentive of higher commissions. Do you want a travel agent making insurance recommendations based on the amount of money they make? No, you want to find the right product for your trip.

Travel agencies can also have higher overall prices for travel insurance. They build in more profit for themselves, knowing most travelers will buy from them directly instead of shopping around.

Online Search
Finally, you might go to Google and type in “travel insurance”. As of today, there are over 211 Million results for “travel insurance”. In the first page or two, you will find many of the leading insurance companies where you can buy direct. You will also find comparison sites that sell most of those same companies’ products. These comparison sites act as an agent for the companies, and earn a commission. Note: Buying directly from the insurance company will not be any cheaper, the comparison sites will have the same quotes as the insurance company.

Travelers can purchase trip insurance up to the day before they depart.

This is actually a very common question. Many people think of the insurance process as being complicated and time consuming. Travel insurance, however, has become a very streamlined business thanks to the web.

Travelers looking for cruise, vacation, or tour coverage can do their research online and compare several different plans at once. You can get instant quotes, pay with a credit card, and recieve an email confirmation almost immediately.

There are benefits to purchasing your trip coverage early

To benefit from financial default coverage and pre-existing medical condition waivers, travelers should get their travel insurance as soon as they start planning and paying for the trip. An archived post, Reasons to buy travel insurance when you book you trip, discusses this further.

Related Links

Reasons to buy travel insurance when you book your trip

Quotetravelinsurance.com Trip insurance comparison site

Many travelers are away from home several times a year, and travel insurance companies have designed annual coverage plans for them.

Companies like HTH Worldwide, Travelex, International Medical Group, and Travelguard all offer a variety of annual coverage, multi-trip insurance plans. These plans offer many of the standard benefits such as medical/dental coverage, accidental death, and emergency medical evacuation.

These annual travel insurance plans usually limit the length of individual trips, from 30-70 days per trip. Longer trips allow for more risk to the insured, so they do need to add these individual trip limits.

No. Medicare, the federal health insurance program for people age 65 and older and for individuals with disabilities, does not provide care in foreign countries.

Travelers who depend on Medicare when in the US need to purchase a travel insurance policy with international medical coverage. Most policies from comparison sites offer some level of international medical coverage, but be sure to read the policy for specifics.

Some finding from a recent US Travel Insurance Association study:

• Travelers who buy trip insurance tend to be well-educated, frequent travelers, and have higher incomes
• 70% of cruise travelers buy travel insurance
• Purchasers of travel insurance are more likely to have a destination or activity as part of their trip rather than visiting friends and relatives
• People are more likely to buy travel insurance when there are more factors out of their control. For example: travelers going abroad are 3 times more likely to buy insurance than domestic travelers
• 77% of people using a travel agent to book their vacation bought travel insurance

The 2006 Travel Insurance Consumer Survey was conducted online in late 2005 of 850 people who had taken at least one leisure trip of one night or more in the last 12 months.

So no big surprises here, but I am impressed with the number of cruise travelers who insure their trip. The reason may be because they are booked through agents, which increases the chances of buying coverage. Cruises also tend to be all-inclusive, which gives the traveler one large cost to worry about as opposed to several small trip costs.