Trip cancellation insurance

J

JOhnH

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Leslie and I are planning a 15 day trip to South America, including a small boat river cruise up the Amazon. Unfortunately, we will not be flying the Bonanza and will be travelling commercial.

Since we need to make reservations several months in advance, anything could happen so we are considering trip insurance to cover the costs of the cruise and the airline flights.

Does anyone have any good advice? Where is a good place to look for this insurance? "Gotchas" to look out for?

TIA.
 
International Travel News (https://www.intltravelnews.com/) has a columnist who has written extensively about trip insurance, including IIRC identifying a couple of agencies that specialize in this type of coverage. Search for "wirtanen" as a starter. Some of the ITN stuff is behind a paywall, but a year's subscription is only twenty five bucks and well worth it. Most of the editorial is from subscribers and is 100% straight shooting.
 
Personally, I'd look at a comprehensive policy that includes travel health, evac, and cancellation insurance.

I use GeoBlue for the health piece (they offer per-trip or annual plans, and include some evac coverage) and MedJetAssist for the evac coverage (It's better coverage than most trip health plans provide, and better than whatever it is that AOPA is hawking these days). And a comparison site like InsureMyTrip.com for cancellation.

I get the health coverage because 1) some countries require it specifically, and 2) because the coverage I get offers better support and coverage on international travel than my primary US UHC plan does (they outright told me it would be covered as "out of network" at best, and some things they may not cover out of the US).

When shopping, check carefully for dates, deadlines, coverage levels, exclusions (including pre-existing conditions), and requirement to have primary US coverage. Same advice applies for cancellation insurance (often you have to take the insurance within a specified time from making the reservations or paying deposits).

I used HTH one time in the past and cancellation was included with the health policy. I moved to GeoBlue because there was (at the time) some exclusion with HTH that gave me heartburn. That may have changed since or may not be an issue for you.
 
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I looked at trip cancellation insurance once... until I read the fine print. The way it was worded it was nearly impossible to collect, dare I say "scam"? For example, missed connection due to weather... only if the whole airport is closed for more than 24 hours. The other scenarios were similarly ridiculous.
 
I have filled out paperwork for patients and family of patients a number of times to get mine back successfully. You get what you pay for. Crappy cheap trip insurance- sucks. Decent you get through your travel agent -if you have one-decent.
 
Also, the credit card yoh book with may cover some of what trip insurance covers, like medical evac, etc.
 
Go with Alianz.. Been using them for a while now...
 
I've had bad experience with trip insurance. They're a bunch of lying scoundrels. We had a CAT 4 hurricane wipe out our destination and the scumbuckets refused to cover the cancellations.
 
Well, since we’re talking about South America make sure the travel insurance covers cancellations or alternate accommodations for political unrest/riots. Lots of countries can get a little unstable (Argentina just had a political power change that goes into effect soon) which can sometimes result in a vacation destination being undesirable.

P.S. you should watch the movie Touristas just as a primer for a South American vacation
 
I second the recommendation for Allianz. I get an annual policy from them. The few claims I've had have been small, like for hotel rooms for missed connections, but they pay immediately and without any hassle. They paid for my partner's airfare when I couldn't make a trip due to illness.
https://www.allianztravelinsurance.com/

In any event, don't take a major trip out of the US without travel insurance. If you think your health plan is going to pay international medical expenses or repatriation, think again. Especially US Medicare or Medicaid, expect $0 coverage.

Jon
 
Thanks for all the replies.
I think the advice to be sure an insurance policy covers political unrest in S.A. is good advice.

For some reason, I have been getting a lot of pop-up advertisements for Allianztravelinsurance. I'll probably call them

Or I may just contact a travel agent for a change since we will be taking in other destinations in other countries too. It seems too daunting to plan this out ourselves.
 
I used TravelGuard for my trip to Africa this spring. It covered extraction costs and transport to the hospital of MY CHOICE if something happened while on the trip. So if I wanted to be thrown on an aircraft and flown to Europe for treatment, I was covered. It also covered flight cancellations (I was on 3 different airlines) and getting me to my destinations if something went awry there. Or if something happened before I left and was unable to make the trip completely. I want to say it ran about $500 for my trip that was probably in the 5 figure range when all was said and done.
 
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