Here’s a worst-case scenario we recently read:  a group of girlfriends was traveling through Spain when a young man bursts around a corner, smashing into the group and knocking several of the young women violently to the ground. A second young man races by, grabs two of their purses, and sprints down another alley.

Ouch!

Inside each of those purses were their passports and every money-retrieving option the young women had: their cash, ATM card, and credit cards – all gone.

3 Steps to Being Prepared and Avoiding Purse or Wallet Theft

1. In crowded areas, consider wearing a money belt under your clothing and store your passport, cash, credit cards, and ATM card there instead. It’s very difficult to steal when it’s not hanging off your shoulder or in your back pocket.
2. Have a sheet of your account numbers and bank phone numbers with you, but have a system of switching the numbers by one or two digits (so the hotel staff can’t find it and use it illegally). If your wallet is stolen, you’ll have the necessary information to report it to the police and cancel the cards.
3. Make a copy of your passport identification page and leave one behind with a friend or family member, pack the other with you. (Again, store it safely when you arrive.) This will help if you need to replace your passport.
4. Before you leave, get a back up card from your bank or have a secondary credit card on hand and stored in a different place. You’ll still have the headache of reporting the theft and canceling all the stolen cards, but you’ll have a way to get around and continue your trip.

We’ve mentioned before that you should not travel with your debit card, for a number of reasons, but many of us forget to clear out our wallets when we travel – especially if we travel frequently.  See these top 6 strategies for protecting your identity on a trip for more information.

When you finally get through the ritual mugging that is now passing through security, and find your departure gate, the last thing you want to hear is that the plane is overbooked.

Some travelers who have flexible schedules find an overbooked plan a treat: they can forfeit their seat, take the voucher and meal coupons, and hang out until the next flight.

For others, it can mean a rough scramble for an alternative way to get to an important business meeting or to your child’s school play.

So what is bumping and overbooking after all?

To be bumped off a flight is to be denied a seat even when you have a reservation. This is the direct result of overbooking, which is a common practice by the airlines to fill all the seats and then some because some passengers won’t make their flight. Essentially, the airlines are betting that someone won’t show up and they’ll get everyone on and have a full flight – more revenue for them.

In some cases, however, everyone shows up and wants to get on that flight, and so the airlines will offer a reward to the traveler who can forfeit their seat. These are typically future air vouchers, cash, and meal tickets and they’ll get you out on the next available flight. The longer the delay, the better the pay-off.

If the airline cannot secure enough volunteers the first go around, they will often sweeten the deal with additional cash and other benefits like drink coupons, upgrades, and more.  the volunteer system works really well even when the number of travelers to get bumped increases over the holidays and busy seasons.

Can you get bumped involuntarily?

Sure you can, but it’s not likely. The volunteer system works really well even when the number of travelers to get bumped increases over the holidays and busy seasons. Still, if you absolutely have to avoid being bumped, arrive as soon as possible because the last passengers to check in are typically the ones who will find themselves involuntarily bumped.

What does the law say about overbooking and bumping?

The Department of Transportation has guidelines outlining overbooking procedures. These are available in their Consumer Guide to Air Travel.

In brief: if the alternative flight will get you where you are going within one to two hours on domestic flights, or within one to four hours on international flights, then the airline must pay you double the cost of your one-way fare up to a maximum of $650. The reimbursement amount increases based on how many hours you are delayed and whether it is a domestic or international flight.

Important! The bumping rules don’t apply to charters or planes with fewer than 30 seats. They also don’t apply to flights inbound to the U.S. or flights between foreign cities because that is outside U.S. airspace. Foreign airlines have their own set of rules.

Your travel insurance travel delay coverage will help you when you are not compensated by the airlines. That is, when your flight is canceled due to severe weather, natural disasters, unannounced strikes, civil riots, and more. If you are compensated by the airline for the delay, your travel insurance won’t provide additional funds, which makes sense when you think about it because that would essentially be getting reimbursed twice.

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.