747FC

Do you purchase trip insurance?

If so, do you purchase it through the cruise line or by your own efforts through an external agency?

If you purchase it externally, do you initially only purchase enough coverage for the unreimbursable expenses (and then escalate coverage as your unreimbursable benchmarks are met), or do you plunk down the entire amount upfront?

Any other tips you have learned over the years about insuring your cruise costs?

Randyk47

We purchase travel insurance. We haven’t always bought insurance as we cruised mostly relatively close to home in the Caribbean but five years ago we extended our cruising destinations and itineraries to Europe. Now we’re talking about exponentially more expensive first/business class flights, pre and post cruise 5-star hotels, and the cruises themselves so there’s a lot at risk. Our last trip this past November was 23 days away from home. A flight to Rome, a couple of days there, then 18 days cruising on Silversea from Civitavecchia to Dubai with several stops in Italy, Egypt, Jordan, and Oman and finally our flight home from Dubai. Bottom line it was way more than I was willing to risk especially with non-refundable air and cruise fares.

I also mention this particular trip because our best friends were to take the trip with us. After purchasing their plane tickets and making final payment on the cruise their 32 year old daughter was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. Luckily they had trip insurance and their loses were minimum, mostly the cost of the insurance itself. The agency and the insurance company were great and worked quickly to pay their claim.

We both use the same external travel insurance agency. We don’t use cruise line insurance. Generally we make all of our own travel arrangements and only book just the cruise with the cruise line. While some lines have better and broader policies than others not all will cover all travel arrangements made externally so we just take care of it ourselves. And more often than not external travel insurance is less expensive than cruise line coverage.

747FC

Thanks for your insights, Randyk47. A couple of followup questions:

1. Do you cover the cost of your flights? I've been told that any change fee is part of the insurance reimbursement, so as long as you are likely to book on the airline again within a year, no need to cover the flight cost amount.

2. When you purchase your insurance, do you do it near the time of the initial booking of your cruise when presumably it is fully or mostly refundable? And, do you cover the entire cost of the cruise, even though you may be eligible for partial refunds?

Many thanks!

Randyk47

GeezerCouple

We always get travel insurance and from a third party insurer, NOT from the cruise line or whoever is selling the "trip", e.g., agency.
(Purchasing from the cruise line sometimes ends up with a "credit" rather than cash back if the trip ends up cancelled, and there can be something like a 1 year time limit to use it. Third party coverage typically gives you the cash for the covered losses; you can use it how you wish, etc.)

You might want to browse the CruiseCritic sub-forum on travel insurance, as most of the issues are not specific to cruises:
https://boards.cruisecritic.com/forumdisplay.php?f=635
Or ask additional questions there, too, of course.

For us, it is imperative that we get coverage that does *not* exclude claims that might be due to pre-existing medical conditions.
That typically means starting the insurance coverage within 10-20 days of making the *first* payment/deposit, refundable or not.
(There are several insurers offering this type of coverage, and the "window" from first payment varies slightly.)
There is one insurer who will offer that waiver if one purchases insurance no later than 24 hours after final payment (narrowly defined). However, the coverage limits are a bit less. More importantly for us, adding the Cancel For Any Reason (CFAR) optional coverage costs *much* more with this company, so we try to avoid it.

We purchase our coverage through a travel insurance broker (www.TripInsuranceStore.com), and the commissions are paid by the insurer, not the traveler.
They handle policies from several "vetted" insurers, and each of those typically offer several different types of policies, so there's a good choice.

We've had very good luck with Travel Insured, and that includes a few claims, including two large ones.
We've heard of difficulties collecting from some insurers, although sometimes it seems because the claim was for a non-covered event/situation.

We also start the insurance coverage for just the deposit, and later, as other amounts to be insured are paid, we add that amount to the insurance and pay the extra in stages like that.
One can include the "change" fees, etc., for air travel, be it actual tickets or awards tickets, or the entire amount if totally non-refundable.

If you call TripInsuranceStore, they'll help walk you through some of the choices, and help with some suggestions, including what you might *not* need. (I love it when a vendor tries *not* to sell us something extra!)

Two considerations are MEDICAL insurance, especially if your regular health insurance doesn't cover you in a different country.
And then there is the cost of the trip itself, in case it needs to be cancelled or interrupted.

One other add-on we get is for MedJetAssist. This is a separate company and they provide medevac services, which only kick in if one is admitted to a hospital as an *inpatient* (not ER or Observation). The important part of their coverage is the *we* would get to decide to be medevac'd home. No beancounters need to weigh in. And no local medical staff would need to put themselves in the possibly awkward situation of declaring them not capable of providing proper care, etc.
You can be taken to your "home hospital" or perhaps a specialty hospital elsewhere in your country.
One must be at least 150 miles from home for this to kick in, at least for USA-based coverage.
Depending upon the nature of the injury/illness, they'll send one home perhaps business class with a nurse accompanying, or all the way to full air medevac/airplane ambulance style.
The annual policy is only slightly more than for one trip, and not only do we take more than one trip a year, but this way, we are covered for trips for business or to visit friends/family.
There is no medical underwriting until age 75, and we'll be finding out what that involves...

GC

jonsail

There are really two issues here:
1) Medical coverage for travel outside of the US where the biggest expense is likely to be, in a catastrophic situation, med evacuation either back to home, or to a city with first rate hospital facilities, if your out of country travel is to less developed countries. Travel Guard is good but you may have such coverage with a premium credit card such as Chase Sapphire Reserve. A friend of mine who flew to Hawaii with her husband economy class had a stroke in Hawaii. Travel Guard deemed it medically advisable that they fly back first class and Travel Guard paid for it.
2) There is also the loss of the pre-paid vacation if family illness or emergency comes up. As to airfare, if bought long in advance there is often a schedule change that may provide an opportunity for a refund. However, the price for the cruise will probably be lost if you self-insure.

Also: On the issue of a flight delay causing you to miss a cruise, if you buy the airfare thru the cruise line, depending on the line, it may be their problem to get you at their expense to the next port. Cruise lines have access to great discount fares that you cannot get on your own. My experience with Seabourn has been that they can get great premium cabin airfares if you are flexible about arrival and departure dates and even arrival or departure from nearby cities.

Randyk47

Another vote for TripInsuranceStore. We were referred to them about five years ago and have had great service from them ever since. When our friends had to cancel because of their daughter’s illness Steve and his staff jumped right in and helped them work through their claim. A bright spot in a very dark time.

747FC

Thanks, GC
I appreciate your detailed recommendations. We have had Medjet for about a decade now, after a friend suffered an injury travelling and without the Medjet, had to pay for a first class ticket for her and a companion to return home.

It think I will give the Trip Insurance Store a call.


Thanks, jonsail. I'm glad you mentioned the Seabourn airfare situation. We cruise with them, and will check out their airfare deals next time we can't find frequent flyer seats.

One warning about depending on CSR for insurance. It clearly states that they do not cover for pre-existing conditions.

Thanks, Randyk47 . I assumed you were talking about the TripInsuranceStore too? Looks like there are a bunch of satisfied FT cruisers who use them, so I am definitely going to call them.

Randyk47

GeezerCouple

"Not to worry"... Steve has the "variant" automatically transfer to the correct website
(And that also stops someone else from using the "almost" version...)

GC

Newbie2FT

The costs of the "trip cancellation" portion of travel insurance are typically the biggest chunk of the policy cost and are often very high (often around 10%-15% of the total trip cost you provide). So, it's important to weigh how likely you are to actually need to cancel and how much loss you would incur versus the cost of the coverage.

So, for example:

[$3,000 total cost * 10% estimated chance of cancelling = $300 cancellation cost, averaged over time] vs. $450 for 'travel cancellation' portion of trip insurance.

That's a tough call -- especially if your credit card will already provide trip cancellation coverage for medical reasons, jury duty, or family death, etc.

Regarding escalating coverage, you have to be careful doing this. As I discuss below, some policies that offer waivers of pre-existing condition exclusion only do so for a policy / up to an amount purchased within 1 - 21 days of the first deposit. I find it safer to insure the entire trip amount that might be insured at the start.

Some trip insurance policies purport to require you to include all costs when requesting a trip insurance quote that includes trip cancellation coverage, in order to be eligible for any reimbursement. Some don't. So keep that in mind when getting quotes.

Also, if you choose not to include air transport in your insured trip cancellation costs, read the policy to make sure that it will then not exclude other benefits of the policy, like trip delay, medical coverage, and accidental death & disability, during those uncovered costs. (Obviously, this would be difficult for the insurer to pursue, but it's worth checking for.)

I agree with GC that timing is very important when it comes to pre-existing condition coverage. Ideally, you should purchase your policy right after making your first payment toward any trip expenses, so that you don't forget and accidentally go over the 10, 14, 20, or 21 day window to purchase the policy and have the pre-existing condition exclusion waived. (A few policies only offer a 1-day or same-day window to get the waiver.)

Some policies do not allow you to roll / add additional trip costs and coverage into the original purchased policy. In those cases, you can estimate your overall costs for the trip when gathering initial quotes.

Also, be mindful that some trip cancellation coverage quotes are not strictly a percentage of the total cost you enter. Sometimes they are tiered. So, for example, if you are quoted for a total trip cost of $2,999, your trip cancellation portion of the policy may cost $282. But if you provide a cost of $3,001, your trip cancellation coverage may jump a tier to $382. You can play around with those figures on the quote websites.

Also, if you're considering a pure medical / Medevac policy for your trip, consider GeoBlue (a Blue Cross licensee). Because GeoBlue only covers you outside the US and you must have US health insurance to purchase GeoBlue coverage, their single-trip and annual plans can be quite inexpensive.

Jonsail brings up a success story for TravelGuard insurance. I think it's important to also do additional research and read reviews of various insurers, including TravelGuard, that are less complimentary. (Of course, it's a self-selected group, as people who post reviews tend to be people who needed the policy and either very happy or mad about what happened.)

Read the policies carefully, as large insurers can be very strict about when they will pay. Sometimes they require inpatient hospitalization instead of an outpatient visit at a clinic to quality for reimbursement, specific licensing of foreign doctors, visiting the doctor within 24 hours of the start of symptoms, particular doctors if you want the insurance company to pay directly instead of reimbursing you after the fact, a doctor's written request for medical evacuation, etc.

I'd suggest that run your trip details through several brokers/comparison sites, not just TripInsuranceStore, as each sets their own commissions. And it only takes about 30 seconds to get quotes from each site.

(Even if you are set on TripInsuranceStore, they may be ready to price-match a lower-priced quote from elsewhere.)

While the comparison sites generally use the same base pool of large insurers, the quoted rates for the same coverage with the same insurer can differ enough between comparison sites to be eye-opening.

Some of the sites also include specialty insurers (backed by large re-insurers) with notably lower rates for certain age groups, destinations, coverage amounts, etc. (like C&F Travel Insured and ITravelInsured, which are both backed by US Fire Insurance Company).

So also check out:

InsureMyTrip, AardvarkCompare, SquareMouth, InsuBuy, and directly through http://www.AmericanExpress.com/travel-insurance (the build-your-own section, where you can mix and match)

Good luck.

Baxter777

I think travel insurance is great to have. Only suggestion, is to AVOID Gererali CSA Travel insurance. There are better companies out there.

slawecki

if one can purchase travel insurance that is not adjusted for age, can be a good deal. if one is quite old, insurance is ridiculously expensive. .quite old/ MY WIFE IS ONLY 72. i am 81, and my mother-in-law is 92. check the rates for us, why don't you?

Newbie2FT

Slawecki -- what are your main reasons for buying travel insurance?

Is it for the medical? For the trip cancellation? For the accidental death? For the legal and language support hotline?

You may have different, less expensive options for each of those, like credit card benefits, a cheap non-US medical policy, etc.

slawecki

air transport for emergency. either health, or injury. i have no problem self insuring for most other instances. what is a cheap non-US med policy?