Travel Insurance

First time cruisers.....not sure what travel insurance is and is it truly needed? Is it medical insurance or is it insurance on your vacation incase you end up not being able to go? If it is medical, will our insurance cover us? We are going to the Bahamas and have Federal Blue Cross and Blue Shield.

Travel insurance covers your non-refundable trip costs for specific reasons. Medical is just one of them. It is advisable to get one when traveling.

For different insurance policies and cost, you can check http://www.tripinsurancestore.com or http://www.insuremytrip.com

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There's an insurance forum here on Cruise Critic.

Comprehensive Travel Insurance generally covers (read any policy's contract before buying):

• Nonrefundable money paid if you must cancel your trip before departure due to a covered reason (trip cancellation)
  
• Expenses incurred if you have to return home before the end of the trip due to a covered reason (trip interruption), including unused, nonrefundable portion of the trip and any change fees or travel expenses required to get home.
  
• Expenses necessary for medical evacuation, including medically supervised flights on commercial flights and air ambulances.
  
• Emergency/urgent medical care (typically this only pays when your health insurance doesn't pay 100% of a given expense)
  
• Cost to rejoin your trip if you miss a flight or miss a ship's sailing (again, read and understand the terms)
  
• Lost or delayed luggage
  

The biggest unknown in the above is medical evacuation. Different policies have different limits, up to $1,000,000.

Your medical insurance may cover you outside of the US, but it might be limited to 80% reimbursement (typically you pay up front and seek reimbursement from your health insurance, then your travel insurance pays the remainder).

Travel insurance will cover your uninsured medical expenses as well as the cost of the trip if you run into problems.

Medical: Travel insurance will be secondary to any other insurance you have. So for most retired Americans, Medicare is primary, any Medicare supplement is secondary and the travel insurance is tertiary.

However, Medicare does not cover you outside the US. So it is of little use on most cruises.

Your Medicare supplement may not cover you either.

The travel insurance will also cover emergency medical transfer to get you to a place where help is available.

If you are stranded along the way ( think Atlanta) yesterday, the travel insurance will cover your expenses for things like travel, hotels, etc

One example: my wife fell ill halfway through a Caribbean cruise, and between the medical expenses and trip interruption the insurance claim came to about $10,000, not counting evacuation (the travel insurance paid the evacuation directly so I don't know what that came to).

Here's an outline of the Princess plan:

Princess Vacation Protection

Protect your vacation investment. You never know when something unexpected may cause you to have to postpone your plans. Fortunately, Princess Vacation Protection can reimburse you for unforeseeable losses stemming from an array of circumstances, and even allows you to cancel your vacation for any reason at all.

Princess Cancellation Fee Waiver Program

Provided by Princess Cruises

Trip cancellation/Trip Interruption protection if you cancel or interrupt your cruise for specified reasons 100% of

Cruise Vacation Cost

Future Cruise Credit if you need to cancel your cruise for Any Reason

100%

Future Cruise Credit

Princess Travel Insurance Program

Underwritten by Transamerica Casualty Insurance Company

Reimburses up to:

Trip Delay (pre-Cruise Vacation)$500

Trip Delay (post-Cruise Vacation)$1,500

Emergency Evacuation/Repatriation$50,000

Accident Medical Expense$20,000

Sickness Medical Expense$20,000

Baggage/Personal Effects$3,000

Baggage Delay$500

Worldwide Emergency Assistance Program

Services provided by On Call International

24/7

Platinum Upgrades

Platinum, Elite and Ruby Captain's Circle Members receive an upgrade to Platinum Protection at Standard price, paid for by Princess Cruises on the member's behalf. Princess Vacation Protection is a recommended optional purchase to your cruise vacation. Without it, you are subject to the Cancellation Refund Schedule above and are not eligible for a refund in the event you must cancel.

Here are a couple of things that travel insurance is NOT

It is not something that protects you from out of pocket expenses.

Get sick on the ship, you have to pay upfront.

Get sick on the Islands , you pay up front.

Miss the ship and need to fly back home, you pay up front.

THEN, when you get back home, you can file for reimbursement.

Even if your health insurance does cover you, neither the ship nor doctors on the Islands will accept you insurance card and file on your behalf, YOU must pay either cash or credit card, then file for reimbursement.

Trip insurance is like any kind of insurance: car, home, life, health, jewelry, etc. You hope you never need it and you never know when something may happen that you have to make a claim.

We always get it. Our last cruise wasn't meant to be; we were in Fort Lauderdale about to get on the ship in 10 hours when I fell ill. Sparing you the details, my hospital bill for 1.5 days was $18,000.00 USD. Are we glad we had coverage? You bet we are. :)

We always get insurance -- cruise plan to cover the cost of the cruise.

We also buy refundable airline tickets and have always been able to cancel hotels at the last minute without paying a fee.

And we have had to cancel a few cruises the last several years because of accidents and other health issues.

Since Security Blue and Medicare do not cover us out of the states, we also buy a separate health and medical evacuation plan. So far we have never had to use it.

You can purchase through your cruiseline or get third party policy. I usually use insuremytrip.com so I can customize ther policy I want and compare prices.

Lots of good advice already, just a couple of additional comments. Insurance offered by most cruise lines (at least Celebrity & Princess that I know of) is not AGE based, meaning that a 75 year old pays the same as a 40 year old. It is also likely to provide at least some level of 'cancel for any reason' protection, sometimes in the form of a full or partial credit towards a future cruise on that line. The negative for cruise line insurance is that it usually does not provide enough medical and evacuation coverage to cover a major problem.

If you are over about 65 years old, compare the cruise line and private policies (via 'InsureMyTrip' etc.) for both cost for your age and coverage. If you're relatively young, you can probably do better with private insurance. What works best for us (age 75+) is the cruise line policy (especially Princess which upgrades us to their premium policy due to our loyalty status) plus an annual medical/evacuation policy that provides extra coverage.

If you have insurance it's probably not necessary to purchase refundable airfare. Insuring non-refundable airfare may be cheaper.

Lots of good advice already, just a couple of additional comments. Insurance offered by most cruise lines (at least Celebrity & Princess that I know of) is not AGE based, meaning that a 75 year old pays the same as a 40 year old.

HAL's insurance was payable at initial booking so the preexisting condition coverage was clearer. You're correct that it appeared to be much cheaper than a policy from insuremytrip.

We always get insurance -- cruise plan to cover the cost of the cruise.

 

 

 

We also buy refundable airline tickets and have always been able to cancel hotels at the last minute without paying a fee.

 

 

 

And we have had to cancel a few cruises the last several years because of accidents and other health issues.

 

 

 

Since Security Blue and Medicare do not cover us out of the states, we also buy a separate health and medical evacuation plan. So far we have never had to use it.

I would strongly advise against buying refundable airline tix. With the difference in price above nonrefundable, you could offset the annual fee of a travel savvy credit card like United Explorer or Chase Sapphire VISAs. If you use those cards to purchase travel (s.g., air tix), it includes trip interrupt/cancel insurance. Of course, read the fine print.

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Another example. My wife fell and fractured a vertebrae two weeks before a cruise. Because we had trip insurance we recovered all but the booking fees. We booked within a year of cancellation and recovered those too. I won't book without insurance.

Its probably an age thing. When we were younger we'd dash off to Europe for two weeks with a vague idea that our health insurance would sort of work over there, and no thought of any need for medical evacuation. Now that we're in our 60s and beyond it is one of our first considerations, particularly on a ship (although my understanding is that the USCG does not charge the evacuee if they airlift someone off a ship).

Depending on your risk taking and also your personal needs will determine how much cover you will need. Personally, travelling without insurance, especially covering medical, is too risky. Always read the PDS and make sure you are actually buying insurance that covers what you need and want.

Luckily we had travel insurance through the cruise line for our RCI cruise Sept 3 out of Galvestion. Thanks to Hurricane Harvey and the flooding our home received, we called the cruise line the Friday before our Sunday departure to cancel. The cruise line refunded all add on charges like gratuities, drink packages, shore exursions, port fees, taxes, etc. The insurance company refunded the cost of the cabin booking. Not sure what happened to the passengers who didn't have the insurance. My husband and I are older so get the insuance, just in case we need it for medical reasons. Little did we know it helped us from a natural disaster that effected us.

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Luckily we had travel insurance through the cruise line for our RCI cruise Sept 3 out of Galvestion. Thanks to Hurricane Harvey and the flooding our home received, we called the cruise line the Friday before our Sunday departure to cancel. The cruise line refunded all add on charges like gratuities, drink packages, shore exursions, port fees, taxes, etc. The insurance company refunded the cost of the cabin booking. Not sure what happened to the passengers who didn't have the insurance. My husband and I are older so get the insuance, just in case we need it for medical reasons. Little did we know it helped us from a natural disaster that effected us.

Good to know, thanks.

Luckily we had travel insurance through the cruise line for our RCI cruise Sept 3 out of Galvestion. Thanks to Hurricane Harvey and the flooding our home received, we called the cruise line the Friday before our Sunday departure to cancel. The cruise line refunded all add on charges like gratuities, drink packages, shore exursions, port fees, taxes, etc. The insurance company refunded the cost of the cabin booking. Not sure what happened to the passengers who didn't have the insurance. My husband and I are older so get the insuance, just in case we need it for medical reasons. Little did we know it helped us from a natural disaster that effected us.

 

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Very wise on your part to have the insurance.

Keith

I know most seem to promote that trip insurance is important when booking a cruise. I'd like to offer a different point of view....

When I started cruising, I decided to not purchase trip insurance. These are the factors I used:

1. I cruised often.. 2-3 times a year. That's actually less often than some. This is a factor in considering trip insurance. The more trips, the more spent on insurance. With a larger number of trips, the overall cost of insurance vs the risk of missing a cruise becomes unreasonable. If I take 10 cruises, what's the risk of missing more than one of them? It's not very high. Whereas, the $$ saved by not purchasing insurance for 10 cruises is high enough to be able to write off a missed cruise. The ratio gets better with more cruises. I've yet to miss a cruise, so I've saved enough insurance fees to pay for 2-3 cruises.

2. Health Insurance. I have travel health insurance coverage provided by my employer (even for personal trips). So I don't need trip insurance for potential health expenses. Even if I didn't have my own health insurance, I'd just buy health insurance for my trips... not trip insurance.

Anyways, not everyone is in the same situation. If I was only cruising once in a blue moon, I'd probably buy trip insurance.I do follow the universal advice of always arriving a day or two in advance of the sail date. This has definitely avoided a missed sailing twice for me.

Darrin

You seem to disregard medical evacuation. That's the biggest unknown for me.

I understand Trumpeter's point. But we always buy insurance.

In two cases I had to respond to business emergencies at the last minute. In one case we had to cancel the cruise the day before sailing. The second case was a two day delay so we had to join the cruise (a 12 day cruise) two days after the ship sailed (from Rotterdam) when she made the first port of call (Oslo).

All costs associated with both events were covered including the fees charged by United Airlines to restore the miles used for the flights. The processes were really not too painful because all out-of-pocket costs were fully documented.

Having been a homeowner for just under 49 years and never having a claim, one could say we wasted our money. While I would love to have all of the premium money back there's no chance I would ever not buy a homeowners policy.

You seem to disregard medical evacuation. That's the biggest unknown for me.

I have medevac coverage. Again, that’s something I have with my employer travel insurance.

Darrin

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Having been a homeowner for just under 49 years and never having a claim, one could say we wasted our money. While I would love to have all of the premium money back there's no chance I would ever not buy a homeowners policy.

Homeowner and auto insurance are not a fair comparison. The risk of loss of a home due to catastrophe or vehicle loss/liability is substantial and unpredictable.

The loss due to a cruise cancelation is predictable (again, just the trip. I always have comprehensive health coverage). I spend a predictable average amount of $$ on a cruise. If you take a substantial number of cruises, at some point the cost of insurance will exceed the cost of missing one of them, and eventually more than one. The more cruises you take, the more you can afford to cancel. The only way the math doesn’t work is if you cancel very early in your cruising history, or cancel multiple cruises too close together. I feel the risk of that is quite low.

I have a cruise booked this July, without insurance. I can cancel that trip and eat the entire cost easily. It would not even come close to the $$ I’ve saved by not purchasing trip insurance on many past cruises. Actually, at this point, I could cancel 3-4 cruises before I start to realize a loss overall. I think the odds are in my favour.

Cheers,

Darrin

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