Travel Insurance

I do not care who you book your cruise through, I recommend travel insurance.  

As a travel agent we have to cancel bookings last minute for clients all the time…Heart attacks, car wrecks, deaths in the family.  All of these have caused my clients to cancel last minute.    Getting one of these cancellation phone calls from a client who purchased travel insurance is a much better phone call than from someone who is going to lose a large portion of their investment because they declined travel insurance.  The cruise lines cannot make exceptions for people…they have to follow their cancellation policies.  If you cancel due to an illness less than 8 days before the cruise you lose all of your money except for taxes.   If you cancel in penalties and want all of your money back the cruise line tells us that is what travel insurance is for.  If you do not get travel insurance you must understand that you are taking the risk of losing close to all of your money for last minute cancellations.

The people who do not buy insurance and decide to get on the ship when they are sick are taking the risk of getting the rest of us sick.   And I have heard plenty of times…”I do not need travel insurance, we are going on this cruise no matter what”.   these people end up on the ship taking the chance of contaminating the rest of us…

A majority of my clients buy travel insurance.  And I have several repeat clients who come back to me because I talked them into getting the insurance and they needed it on their cruise.  

Travel Insurance should cover you for cancellations, trip interruption, baggage loss, medical expenses on your trip, and emergency medical transportation.   Be very careful if you are getting “free travel insurance” with your booking.  Compare the free insurance with the coverage you get with the insurance you have to pay for…it is most likely not very comparable.  

Almost weekly, we have people who have to cancel last minute due to medical reason…Monthly we have clients who needed the travel insurance on their trip due to an injury or illness.  The ship board Doctors are independent contractors….they do not take health insurance, they will charge your onboard account.  If you do not have travel insurance you will have to pay with your credit card and your health insurance is not going to reimburse you.   Compared to the coverage, travel insuance is inexpensive…and I fully recommend it to all travelers, even if you do not book your travel through me.