A few years ago, the cruise ship health news was all about the norovirus, nicknamed the ‘cruise ship virus’. Norovirus is an infection that causes over 20 million cases of gastroenteritis annually in the U.S. alone and for which there is no treatment. In 2011, an experimental norovirus vaccine was developed and studied.

Cruise Ship Sanitation Reports

In the meantime, however, cruise ship travelers have definitive resource to find out how safe their cruise ship may or may not be:  the CDC maintains a Vessel Sanitation Program (VSP) to assist the cruise industry on the prevention of the spread of gastrointestinal diseases on their ships. They post the most recent sanitation scores and reports for specific cruise ships on their website.

It operates under the Public Health Service Act and works by:

• inspecting cruise ships periodically and by unannounced inspections
• monitoring gastrointestinal illness outbreaks
• training cruise ship employees on public health practices

Plus, they provide health information regarding the cruise ship industry to the traveling public. For more information, read about the CDC’s Vessel Sanitation Program (VSP).

Research your intended cruise ship’s sanitation scores: enter the cruise ship, the cruise line, and choose the dates for which you want their scores.  In general, the higher the score, the higher the level of sanitation, but this score does not reflect the risk of getting some diseases.  A score of 86 (out of 100) or higher is considered good.

Alternative Cruise Ship Information and Cruise Travel Insurance

Alternatively, you can select the cruise ships with scores of 100 and review their reports.

In addition, the CDC provides updated outbreak information for international cruise ships and public health information for cruise ship travelers.

If you’re planning a cruise trip for 2012, be sure to review your health insurance policy and the coverage area to understand whether you will have health care protection on your trip. Also, remember that Medicare does not provide coverage outside the U.S. borders and if you have to be medically evacuated off the ship to receive medical care, having a travel insurance plan with medical evacuation coverage is a sure way to avoid a very expensive and unexpected bill.

These days, as work has become global and families are spread out, most of us have to fly. Unfortunately, the confined and often crowded space inside an airplane can quickly turn into a breeding ground for infectious diseases.

Not all passenger vessels are designed with air filtration systems. While most passenger jets have sophisticated filtration systems to keep airborne viruses from spreading, infections still spread simply because of the close proximity of other people.

Viruses and bacteria can survive for many hours on the surfaces of seats, tray tables, seat pockets, even armrests. High altitude and dry air compromises the body’s ability to defend itself, and fatigue plays a strong role in making travelers more susceptible to falling ill.

The recent death of rap star Dwight Arrington Myers, or Heavy D, after flying from England to L.A. underscores the danger of sitting for long periods of time. Myer’s death was a result of deep vein thrombosis, or DVT. The CDC has long linked air travel with the development of blood clots, or thrombus, which break off and travel to the lungs.

5 Steps to Staying Healthy While Traveling

The following are the recommended precautions to implement to stay healthy while traveling:

1. Stay hydrated with clean water at all times.
2. Wash your hands frequently, especially before touching food.
3. Bring your own pillow, blanket, and earphones.
4. Open the air vent above you and aim it in front of your face to blow virus-carrying particles away.
5. Disinfect the tray table, armrests and remote controls as soon as you are seated with individual sanitizer packets.

Also, it’s important to recognize the risk of blood clots is elevated when taking a long trip of any kind: by plane, by train, by automobile, by bus. Therefore, it’s crucial to get up and move around periodically or at least wriggle your legs, lift them up off the floor, point your toes, and jiggle frequently. Staying hydrated also helps according to the CDC, and consider opting for the aisle seat so you have more opportunity to stand and move about.

As the new year has officially begun, we’ve collected a list of resolutions we plan to adopt to ensure our safe travel this year. You are encouraged to steal these for your own resolutions list!

1. Never pay cash for your pre-paid and non refundable trip costs. Don’t like credit card debt? Congratulations – you’re ahead of the financial game, but by being willing to use your credit card (pay the bill immediately) you are buying yourself a little protection because you can dispute unauthorized claims that appear on your card. Credit card companies are like financial guard dogs and they’ll go after offenders and remove charges from your bill.
2. Never do business with an organization you don’t know. Any number of shiny, new websites appear every day and they can look very trustworthy, but that trust can be quickly destroyed when you’ve sent a check to Paris (see resolution #1) to rent an apartment for a week and arrive to find no apartment.
3. Always guard your identity on your trips. In 2010, the FTC reported over a quarter million consumers affected by identity theft. The explosive growth of smart phones, skimmer devices, and recording camera usage has exposed many smart travelers to thieves. See our strategies for protecting your identity on a trip and read the recommendations to protect yourself against cyber data mining.
4. Always buy trip cancellation insurance if you can’t afford to throw away the money you are paying.  We’ve had numerous accounts of travelers who had to cancel their trips due to family emergencies, hurricanes, a death in the family, and personal illnesses. Many of those travelers would have been helped by having the right travel insurance plan with trip cancellation coverage.
5. Always buy travel health insurance if you will be traveling outside your home network of coverage. This year, we posted a number of stories of travelers who were saved by their travel insurance and those who had to rely on public campaigns to raise funds to cover their care and transportation.
6. Always read your travel insurance description of coverage. Yes, it can seem dull, but if you think about the activities you will be doing on your trip, the risks you face (see this recent traveler’s story about a disastrously dangerous and expensive trip to Mexico), and the availability of good medical care where you will be visiting, the description of coverage won’t seem as boring after all.  See the 5 most common travel insurance “loopholes” and how to avoid them too.
7. Don’t spend too much money on your travel insurance plan. Many plans offer high payouts for rare situations in an effort to appear to have more comprehensive coverage. In some cases, that’s not what you need. See our rules for saving money on your travel insurance plan to avoid overpaying for your trip insurance. See our travel insurance comparison tool to compare plan prices.
8. Understand how to travel safely. See our most useful travel survival tips for the new year, and consider signing up for our free weekly newsletter for the latest travel alerts, travel health warnings and more from the U.S. State Department and the CDC, plus current travel news.

So, those are our resolutions … what are your travel resolutions for 2012?

 

What happens to your travel investment if the B&B where you had reservations is destroyed by fire?

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.

 

Whether you are traveling to a remote location or simply walking around a new and unfamiliar city, there are risks.  The following are the top 7 useful travel survival tips culled from the experts.

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.

We recently received a flyer from HTH Worldwide, who offers global travel insurance plans through Travel Insurance Review, and we wanted to share it with our readers.

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.

We recently had a question from a traveler who received a future airline credit for an upcoming trip and we wanted to use it to explain how this works.

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.