News of death – especially deaths that occur on vacations – are sensational. Like the 26-year old U.S. tourist who died on a Bahama cruise or the three skiers recently killed in a Washington avalanche.

Whether a traveler is traveling solo, with friends, or with family, it’s important to remember that if a death occurs on any trip, your body isn’t automatically shipped back home for burial. In fact, it’s stored in the local morgue and local laws govern how long it can wait before being collected. Transporting a body can take a lot of money and coordination to properly prepare and ship it back home.

One travel insurance coverage no traveler should leave home without is repatriation. Often lumped together with medical evacuation coverage, repatriation is a fancy word arranging for and transporting a covered person’s body to his or her home or to a nearby funeral or cremation facility. Having this benefit with your travel insurance plan means your family won’t have to pay for the unexpected costs related to collecting and shipping your body home for burial.

Each country has their own laws and regulations governing how a body can be transported. Many require a good deal of paperwork – paperwork and coordination that must occur in the local language.

Even if you are traveling with family members, they won’t have to navigate the complications of transporting your body home. With repatriation coverage included in your travel insurance plan, you’ll have assistance services representatives to coordinate and manage this responsibility. Similar to life insurance that leaves those depending on you a little safer financially should you die, repatriation insurance ensures that they’ll have the help they need to coordinate your body’s return home if you die on a trip.

In 2011, the Better Business Bureau (BBB) received over 7,000 complaints nation-wide regarding travel agencies. Many travelers still prefer to work with a travel agent rather than making their travel arrangements on their own using Internet resources, but choosing the wrong agent or agency can lead to disappointment.

1. Do your own research. A personal referral always carries more weight. Ask your family members, friends, and business partners who they use and go to bbb.org to see how they rate.
2. Use an agency you already know. If the company you work for uses an agency for their business travel and you like how they take care of you on business trips, ask if they are willing to help you with personal trips and vacations as well.

Interviewing a travel agency or travel agent

When you think you’ve got a travel agency you like, you’ll want to interview them. Here are some things to ask them:

1. Ask whether they provide trip details in writing and ask to see an example. Does it include the details you need to contact the travel agent, the airline, car rental companies, hotels, etc.? If not, you may not have the information you need if a worst-case scenario occurs.
2. Ask how they help travelers in an emergency – what they can and cannot do. Travelers stranded in natural disasters, accidents, and medical emergencies can call their travel insurance assistance services for help and even evacuations (depending on the plan). Be sure your travel agent can do at least the same.
3. Ask about their trip cancellation and refund policies and review them carefully. Travel insurance lets a traveler cancel their trips for covered reasons, so be sure you know what the covered reasons are with your travel agent.
4. Ask if they provide pre-trip vaccination, currency, passport, and weather information. See our post on a family who was turned away at the border for a 3-month passport validity requirement their travel agent should have warned them about.
5. Ask if they are travel insurance agents and which travel insurance companies they represent. (You can also review travel insurance companies here too.)

After choosing a travel agency or travel agent

It’s important to remember that your travel agent isn’t taking the trip – you are – and if things go badly your travel agent may be able to help but you’ll still be the one doing the suffering. You, and your family, that is so it’s important to remember a few steps to protect yourself.

1. Pay with a credit card. If things go wrong, you’ll have some financial protection and you may have some (but not a lot) travel protection with your credit card as well.
2. Verify and print your vacation details, trip insurance details, and reservation details to take with you. See our recommendations for what to take with you on your trip.

If you’re a traveler who prefers not to do all the research and make your own travel plans, then working with a travel agent may be a good idea. Just be sure you understand what you’re getting for your money.

As reports of a bomb blast in Bangkok circulated last week, travelers are reminded that they should think carefully about what to do should a bomb go off where they are traveling.

What should you do if a bomb goes off in the street where you are walking?

Although you may be tempted to remain and render assistance, the experts advise immediately leaving the area where a bomb has exploded for two reasons:

1. Unless you are a medically trained expert, it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to offer the injured much assistance, and
2. there is always the chance of a secondary explosion timed to cause additional damage and wreck rescue operations.

It’s a horrible scenario, but it’s been proven true over and over again. Terrorists will time their bombings to hit once and then hit again to cause additional damage.  Leave the heroics to the local authorities and get as far away from the scene as possible, returning to your place of lodging where you can monitor the news and let folks know your condition and whereabouts.

While there is little to no value in over-worrying, it is worth your life to stay aware, pay attention to the security levels at public places where tourists are likely to congregate. If you must travel to places where the risk of terrorism is high, register your trip details with the free U.S. State Department’s Smart Traveler Enrollment Program. When you sign up, you’ll automatically receive the most current information about the country to which you will be traveling and you’ll receive updates and warnings. Plus, the government will be better able to assist you in the event of an emergency.

Many people board their pets when they travel, but what happens if your return trip is delayed because you are unexpectedly hospitalized? Will you have enough money to cover the added cost of additional boarding fees?

If you board your pet or pets while taking a trip, Travel Guard’s Travel Rite plan includes a benefit just for pet-lovers: additional boarding fees can be covered up to $25.00 per day (up to $200 maximum) if your return trip is delayed due to your hospitalization.

That means, if you end up in a hospital in Rome with a broken ankle, you’ll have the coverage you need to help with the additional pet boarding fees when you get back home. It’s a great feature for travelers board their pets.

See a full review of Travel Guard’s Travel Rite plan for additional information.

 

This is only a brief description of the coverage(s) available.

The Policy will contain reductions, limitations, exclusions and termination provisions. Insurance is underwritten by National Union Fire Insurance Company of Pittsburgh, Pa., a Pennsylvania insurance company, with its principal place of business at 175 Water Street, New York, NY 10038. It is currently authorized to transact business in all states and the District of Columbia. NAIC No. 19445. Coverage may not be available in all states.

The U.S. State Department has issued a travel warning – not a travel alert – regarding the ongoing and dangerous security situation in Mexico, which has begun spreading into resort and tourist areas. If you’ve been considering a Spring Break vacation in Mexico this year, we suggest you reconsider.

A number of U.S. citizens have been the victim of growing violence in a number of areas of Mexico, including being murdered, caught in gun battles, kidnapped, carjacked, and robbed on the highway.

The rising number of kidnappings and disappearances have caught the attention of the media as both locals and expats are also targets. In some cases, local Mexican police officers have been implicated in these crimes.

If you do choose to travel to Mexico this Spring Break season, see the U.S. State Department’s state-by-state assessment (scroll down to see this portion) to understand the risks you are facing. Be sure to have travel insurance that includes travel medical coverage and medical evacuation in case you are injured and need to return home.

Review our Travel Safety Tips for information on finding travel medical care in a hurry and the top 12 hotel safety tips (among others).

Remember, your standard trip cancellation coverage will not let you cancel your trip simply because you got nervous and changed your mind. If you book your travel to Mexico and media reports make you nervous, you’ll need ‘cancel for any reason’ protection if you are to get 50-100% of your pre-paid travel costs back.

In the last few weeks, a number of cruise ships have been re-routed and delayed due to outbreaks of norovirus. Norovirus, often called the ‘cruise ship virus’, is a nasty stomach virus that spreads like crazy in close quarters. It causes vomiting and diarrhea and it’s extremely contagious; you can be infected by coming in contact with just a few particles. It’s also very hard to stop and those who’ve had it can be contagious for up to 72 hours after their symptoms stop. Of course, because the person feels better, they get back to having fun and continue the spread of the virus around the ship.

Avoiding Norovirus

There is no medical intervention that prevents the spread of the virus – it’s all about strict hygiene efforts. Unfortunately, alcohol-based hand sanitizers aren’t very effective at stopping the spread of norovirus, so you must wash your hands after touching any surface that may be infected. Vigorous hand washing with plenty of soap and water will take the virus off your hands.

Cruise ship cleaning teams know that keeping all surfaces very clean is also important. That means washing doorknobs, handrails, and faucet handles, but don’t forget computer keyboards, remote controls and cell phones as well.

Some passengers recommend putting the remote in a plastic bag to avoid touching it.

Recovering from Norovirus

If you are stricken with the virus, the first rule of thumb is to drink plenty of fluids because the dehydration caused by norovirus can cause more serious symptoms. Some people are treated with IV fluids if they cannot keep them down. In some cases, anti-nausea medications can help with the symptoms as well.

Airlines have initiated a new way to gouge gullible customers. What sounds like a good idea, charging you an extra fee to retain the value of your nonrefundable ticket should you have to cancel, has morphed into something less than desirable because the airlines will charge you a fee to change your ticket and you still don’t get your money back. You simply get to use whatever value is left, after their fees, toward another ticket you can use in the future.

Rather than accept these airline ‘deals’ that really have little value, consider trip cancellation or ‘cancel for any reason’ coverage instead.

Let’s run some quick numbers through our travel insurance comparison tool, and see what this would cost.

We’ll imagine two travelers are taking a short anniversary trip, here are the pertinent trip details:

• Denver to San Francisco
• Three night stay
• Travelers are 32 and 37 years old
• Cost per traveler is $1,095

Using those trip details, we got about 40 potential policies. We’ll choose the two lowest-priced plans from the results and compare.

 

Notice that with travel insurance, these travelers can get 100% of their trip costs back if they have to cancel for a wide number of reasons (the reason for cancellation must be a covered reason), but they also get:

• Emergency medical if they get sick or injured or crack a tooth on their trip
• Trip interruption if they have to return home early for an emergency
• Medical evacuation if they have to be transported back home for medical reasons
• Travel delay if their flight is delayed for weather, mechanical failure, etc.
• Baggage protection if their luggage doesn’t arrive intact or is delayed
• Life insurance if they die on their trip
• 24/7 Travel assistance services if they need any kind of travel assistance

So, for a lot less than what the airline will give you, you really can have your entire pre-paid costs refunded to you. The key, of course, is to carefully read your trip insurance policy and cancel your trip for a covered reason.

Having travel insurance really is the only SURE way to get a refund on your nonrefundable airline tickets, but you’ll also get a refund for your pre-paid hotel costs and a number of other benefits in case something goes wrong on your trip too.

Recently, there seems to be a rash of strange items found in passenger luggage by the TSA, some of which are causing temporary airport evacuations and potentially disrupting traveler’s plans.

Read about the hand grenade found in one passenger’s carry-on in Kentucky and the live cannonball found in one passenger’s checked luggage in Florida.

In both cases, the passengers had no intent to harm, in the case of the cannonball it had been collected as a souvenir on a diving trip, but of course these events have the potential to cause serious harm. Cannonballs found at the bottom of the ocean can still retain their explosive elements and have been known to detonate.

Other recent reports of dangerous items collected by TSA screeners include a cattle prod, loaded guns, and even a lipstick knife.

Attempting to board a plane with these items can have some unfortunate side effects. The less serious side effect is the potential for delaying flights, which can have a ripple effect throughout the airline flight plans for that day. Another side effect is that passengers who attempt to board with these items are often denied boarding. In all cases, these items are confiscated by the TSA, and in the case of loaded guns, the passenger is in serious trouble.

So, should you find a hand grenade or other interesting artifacts on your trip, consider leave them where you found them and settling for a photograph instead.