What Is Comprehensive Travel Insurance?
Comprehensive travel insurance refers to single trip plans that offer the widest range of benefits. This type of coverage is extremely popular among travelers as it offers travel protection against the most common disruptions, including cancellations, trip delays, medical emergencies, lost luggage, and more.
What Does Comprehensive Travel Insurance Cover?
Comprehensive travel insurance policies provide financial protection for unexpected events that impact your trip. The following are popular benefits commonly included in comprehensive plans that can offer reimbursement to travelers:
Cancellation Coverage
One of the key differentiators between comprehensive travel insurance plans and other types of insurance coverage is that they offer cancellation protection. Cancellation benefits can save you from losing out on trip expenses if you need to cancel your vacation or cut it short.
- Trip Cancellation: Can reimburse up to 100% of your prepaid, non-refundable trip costs if you need to cancel your trip for a covered reason. Commonly covered cancellation reasons include unforeseen injuries, illness, death to a family member, natural disaster, or terrorism.
- Trip Interruption: Offers reimbursement for unused travel expenses if you are forced to end your trip early and return to your home country for a covered reason.
Medical Coverage
Since most primary healthcare plans don’t offer coverage abroad, seeking medical care during an international trip can be an expensive, and stressful, ordeal. Many travelers purchase insurance to protect against costly, unexpected medical bills they may face during a trip.
- Emergency Medical: Provides reimbursement for unexpected medical expenses you incur during your trip such as hospital stays, doctor visits, x-rays, and more. Exclusions and deductibles may apply.
- Medical Evacuation: Covers the cost of an emergency evacuation to a more adequate medical facility if deemed necessary by your treating physician.
Delay & Baggage Loss Coverage
According to the Department of Transportation, roughly a quarter of all U.S. flights are either delayed or canceled. In addition, millions of bags are mishandled by airlines each year. Luckily, comprehensive plans offer delay and luggage protection.
- Travel Delay: Offers reimbursement for food and accommodation expenses if your flight is significantly delayed. Most plans will offer coverage after a delay of at least 3-12 hours.
- Missed Connection: Covers additional expenses incurred to rebook a flight if a delay causes you to miss a connecting flight.
- Baggage Delay: If your bags are delayed, you may be covered for the purchase of clothes, toiletries, and other necessities while you wait for your luggage to arrive at your destination.
- Baggage & Personal Item Loss: If your personal belongings are lost, stolen, or damaged during your trip, you may be entitled to reimbursement for the cost to replace the items.
Optional Policy Add-Ons
Many comprehensive travel insurance plans will give you the option to enhance your coverage at checkout with policy add-ons. These benefits can provide additional peace of mind during a trip, but come at a cost.
- Cancel for Any Reason (CFAR): Provides partial reimbursement if you need to cancel for a reason not already covered by Trip Cancellation.
- Pre-Existing Condition Waiver: Extends medical benefits to cover pre-existing medical conditions that are often excluded from coverage.
How Much Does Comprehensive Travel Insurance Cost?
The cost of comprehensive travel insurance is roughly $403. With that said, the price of your policy will depend on a variety of factors. Most travel insurance companies will take the following into consideration when determining the cost of a policy:
- Your Trip Length: The amount of time you’ll be away from home.
- Your Trip Costs: The sum of all of your prepaid, non-refundable travel expenses.
- Your Destination: The primary country that you will be visiting.
- The Age of Travelers on Your Policy: In general, trip insurance is more expensive for older travelers.
- The Policy’s Coverage Limits: The amount a policy will reimburse you for a covered disruption.
Finding the Best Travel Insurance For Your Budget
The cost of travel insurance has steadily increased over recent years in correlation to the rising cost of travel. However, there are a few tactics you can implement to find great coverage for less.
The first being to check for any existing travel insurance coverage you may already have through other sources. Many travel credit cards, for example, now offer a wide-range of trip protection benefits that may meet your coverage needs.
We also recommend taking the time to compare plans from different providers. Every provider calculates their premiums differently to appeal to their unique target demographic. This explains why you’ll see a wide-range of prices for almost identical prices. Using a site like Squaremouth to compare travel insurance plans side-by-side can help you find the right coverage at the right price for your upcoming trip.
Is Comprehensive Travel Insurance Worth It?
For many travelers, the peace of mind that a comprehensive travel insurance plan provides is enough to justify the cost. Knowing you’re covered in events out of your control impact your trip can take a lot of stress out of traveling.
In general, comprehensive travel insurance is recommended if you:
- Are spending a lot on your trip
- Are concerned about having to cancel or interrupt your trip
- Want well-rounded trip protection
- Don’t have any existing travel medical insurance