Travel insurance can protect you against financial loss if you're forced to cancel, delay or interrupt your vacation, business trip, or other travels.
It can also offer you protection if you experience a medical emergency, damage to personal property and even if a death occurs while you're traveling.
Types of travel insurance
- Accidental death
- Baggage loss
- Foreign travel medical/health
- Medical evacuation
- Rental car damage
- Travel delay
- Trip cancellation
- Trip interruptions
Before buying travel insurance
- Check your other insurance policies for similar coverage.
- Review the policy for what's covered and what's excluded.
- Look at the refund policy.
- Check to see if it covers trip cancellation due to health and disease outbreaks (i.e., Coronavirus) or natural disasters where you are traveling to.
- Find out if it covers trip cancellation due to terrorism, civil unrest, and/or state department warnings against traveling to where you plan to go.
- Ask about pre-existing health conditions and age limits on coverage.
- Medicare does not cover medical bills for service outside the U.S.
- If you plan to use a credit card to book a trip, ask the credit card company if it automatically offers any type of extra protection coverage.
- Find out about cancellation waivers (this is not insurance). Cruise and tour operators may offer cancellation waivers for a fee. They'll reimburse a portion of your cost if you cancel for any reason up to 24 hours before departure.
Where to buy travel insurance
Many travel agencies and online travel companies (i.e., Hotwire, Priceline, etc.) offer insurance packages you can buy with your vacation or travel package.
You can also search using our agent, agency and company lookup to find someone who's licensed to sell travel insurance.