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New health restrictions on MSC


lenkard

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I would imagine other lines are going to adopt this policy from MSC cruises (see full article https://www.cruiseindustrynews.com/cruise-news/22351-msc-adds-health-measures-to-fleet-restricts-china-travelers.html)

Mandatory non-touch thermal scans conducted for all guests and crew prior to embarkation for every cruise operated by the company anywhere in the world, and persons with signs or symptoms of illness such as fever (≥38 C°/100.4 F°) or feverishness, chills, cough or difficulty breathing will be denied embarkation;

It's winter and someone in my family often has some sort of mild cold or cough.  I wonder how this is going to work.  Sailing on Feb. 15.

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4 hours ago, Rene Desmarais said:

right,  I can see it now.   Sitting at the Miami port to embark on Navigator in the Miami heat..  long lineups, massive crowds, sweating  and excited to embark.

how many read flags that will set off?

Add in trying to wrangle excited kids while toting everyone's carry on. I've got a 100.4 temperature just thinking about it! 

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Just curious as to would happen if you failed the health requirements and were left standing there dumbfounded - would you get reimbursed for the cruise? You now have a flight seven days from now, if it is a seven day cruise, and you now have to get home. I would lose that ticket as it is probably non-refundable. I can imagine all the costs that would start racking up as I try to get my, supposed sick-self, back to Virginia? 

Thoughts?

 

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13 minutes ago, Tim B. said:

Just curious as to would happen if you failed the health requirements and were left standing there dumbfounded - would you get reimbursed for the cruise? You now have a flight seven days from now, if it is a seven day cruise, and you now have to get home. I would lose that ticket as it is probably non-refundable. I can image all the costs that would start racking up as I try to get my, supposed sick-self, back to Virginia? 

Thoughts?

 

If you had travel insurance and you couldn't board because you were sick, I wonder if the insurance would cover it. 

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I believe the current method of "screening" where they ask if you have had any symptoms when you check-in scares folks into lying about it.  If you do end up saying that you have had cold/flu/noro symptoms they won't let you board until they have someone from medical staff clear you. Now not sure how thorough of an examination that is or what all it takes to detect someone has something specific that would deny them boarding..but they ask those questions for a reason.

There are a variety reasons that non-infected people can have similar symptoms.  If this thing presents early on with mild cold symptoms -- how many people do you know that go see a doctor at the first sign of a cold?

I would imagine the cruiseline refunds in the form of a credit if someone gets denied boarding for illness, but travel insurance would have to kick in for the other travel costs.  

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Just now, SpeedNoodles said:

If you had travel insurance and you couldn't board because you were sick, I wonder if the insurance would cover it. 

I'm an insurance nerd and this has me scanning my travel insurance policy and trying to apply the situation. 

Usually trip cancellation coverage is only effective until you begin your trip.  If you insured your flights as part of your trip, then technically the trip begins when you leave your house and therefore the trip has already began at that point so you no longer have cancellation coverage. 

That's when you have to look at trip interruption coverage to see if/how it would apply. 

Just from my insurance policy, one of the covered reasons for trip interruption is:

Your, Your Family Member’s, Your Traveling Companion’s, Your Traveling Companion’s
Family Member, Your Business Partner’s or Your Business Partners Family Member’s
covered Sickness or Injury which: a) occurs while You are on Your Trip, b) requires Medical
Treatment at the time of interruption resulting in medically imposed restrictions, as certified
by a Legally Qualified Physician, and c) prevents Your continued participation on Your Trip;

Now the question here is the medical staff person that screened you and led to a denial of boarding considered a "Legally Qualified Physician" and what documentation do you need to get to prove that your symptoms/illness fulfill parts B and C.  

Another covered reason that includes being quarantined:

You or Your Traveling Companion being hijacked, quarantined, required to serve on a jury
(notice of jury duty must be received after Your Effective Date), served with a court order to
appear as a witness in a legal action in which You or Your Traveling Companion is not a party
(except law enforcement officers);

But again, is being denied boarding for being sick considered a quarantine if it's for something like noro where they aren't going to put you in isolation back on land?

Now my policy also has this additional benefit under trip interruption that could apply:

If You cannot continue travel due to a covered Injury or Sickness not requiring hospitalization and
You must extend Your Trip due to medically imposed restrictions, as certified by a Legally Qualified
Physician, benefits will be paid for additional hotel nights, meal(s), telephone call and local
transportation expenses.

The language here seems to imply that this only kicks in if you have to EXTEND your trip..but the definition of a trip is from when you leave until when you return.  So unless you get quarantined and not allowed to take your flight home I'm not sure this would have the coverage for the interim period until your flight home.

Then we go to trip delay coverage:

Benefits will be paid up to $200 per day for: 1) the non- refundable, unused portion of the Prepaid
expenses for Your Trip as long as the expenses are supported by proof of purchase and are not
reimbursable by any other source; and 2) reasonable accommodation, meal, telephone call and
local transportation expenses incurred by You, up to the Maximum Benefit Amount shown in the
Confirmation of Benefits, if You are delayed for 6 hours or more while en route to or from, or during
Your Trip, due to:

Again, one of the reasons covered here is:

quarantine, hijacking, Strike, Natural Disaster, terrorism or riot;

Then another coverage that could be applicable..or not is Missed Connection coverage:

If You miss Your cruise or tour departure because Your arrival at Your Trip destination is delayed
for 3 or more hours, due to:

quarantine, hijacking, Strike, Natural Disaster, terrorism or riot.

We will reimburse You, up to the Maximum Benefit Amount shown in the Confirmation of Benefits,
for:
a) Your Additional Transportation Cost to join Your Trip; and
b) Your Prepaid expenses for the unused land or water Travel Arrangements; and
c) reasonable accommodation, telephone and meal expenses up to $200 per day
necessarily incurred by You for which You have proof of purchase and which were not
paid for or provided by any other source.

This is where travel insurance gets confusing..you have to figure out which one of these coverages is the one that you file under.  In the case of being denied boarding, with the appropriate documentation (and I would make sure there was a letter from the cruiseline/medical personnel that you were denied boarding due to a quarantine type situation), I would venture to say you'd have the most luck getting coverage under the Missed Connection here.  Technically the you are missing the connection to the next part of your trip.  

Now interpreting this is fun because does that mean you can hole up in a hotel at the $200/day limit until your flight home?  If you decided to pay a change fee to get your flight home moved up, is that change fee covered?  Is it considering "joining your Trip" if you are changing the flight to go home and end the Trip early in this situation?

So basically..even if you have trip insurance, they really don't make it easy on you to file ?

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@AshleyDillo - thanks for the detailed response but as you can see it is still a toss up as to if you will get your money back. The cruise alone could be 3-4K or more depending on rooms chosen as well as  $500-1500 on flight so this isn't chump change we are speaking of. I'm glad you discussed about getting paperwork as I'm not sure I would have thought about that in the state of shock I would be in. 

All interesting things to think about. I'm glad we have this forum to discuss these type of odd events. 

 

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11 minutes ago, Tim B. said:

I'm glad you discussed about getting paperwork as I'm not sure I would have thought about that in the state of shock I would be in. 

Paperwork is crucial for any kind of insurance claim.  So so so much paperwork.  When you take out a single trip insurance policy they ask you for the amount you are insuring which should be the total of all your travel expenses.  This gives them the baseline for your coverage limits.  When I went to actually file a claim for my first time ever, I had to substantiate this baseline.  That meant I had to prove how much I had paid for the trip..all of the invoices, receipts, credit card statements, etc had to be pieced together.  Then there's all the paperwork to document your reason for filing the claim.  And then you actually have to show how much you are out of pocket, etc.  I had over 70 pages submitted with my claim and all we were claiming was that our flight home was cancelled because of a hurricane and we had to pay for a new flight at the last minute.

I believe that the cruiseline would refund your cruise fare as a credit for another cruise if they deny you for failing medical screening.  Insurance considers that making you whole and they won't reimburse you if you get refunded or credited by the carrier.

One thing folks don't realize when it comes to travel insurance is that it's a reimbursement situation.  You still have to be able to float the money in the first place in any of these situations.  I cringe when people quip, "That's what travel insurance is for!"  A lot of the things folks think are covered are not covered, or if they are it's not what they expect (cancel for any reason insurance, for example).

Unfortunately folks tend to forego travel insurance for financial reasons which is understandable when you've saved and saved and budgeted for a trip.  A lot of those folks don't have the means to be able to front the expenses if something happens.  You see it all the time when flights get cancelled for weather and the next flight isn't until the next day.  Some folks can't just drop $150-$200 for a last minute hotel so they end up sleeping at the airport.

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On 1/31/2020 at 8:36 AM, Tim B. said:

Just curious as to would happen if you failed the health requirements and were left standing there dumbfounded - would you get reimbursed for the cruise? You now have a flight seven days from now, if it is a seven day cruise, and you now have to get home. I would lose that ticket as it is probably non-refundable. I can imagine all the costs that would start racking up as I try to get my, supposed sick-self, back to Virginia? 

Thoughts?

 

The Royal site and a Blog post on here states you will be refunded your cruise fare.

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On 1/31/2020 at 8:36 AM, Tim B. said:

Just curious as to would happen if you failed the health requirements and were left standing there dumbfounded - would you get reimbursed for the cruise? You now have a flight seven days from now, if it is a seven day cruise, and you now have to get home. I would lose that ticket as it is probably non-refundable. I can imagine all the costs that would start racking up as I try to get my, supposed sick-self, back to Virginia? 

Thoughts?

 

that's why I always buy insurance -- it's cheap considering the alternative!!

 

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