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I have never purchased travel insurance since I started cruising the summer of 2013, but I am starting to think that I should purchase travel insurance! Do you think that I should purchase travel insurance for my cruise on Odyssey in December 2021 because I am traveling with a senior citizen who I don’t think has any problems when traveling on cruise ships that requires her to go to the medical center. Also I am thinking about purchasing travel insurance is that my mother & I both have a “pre-existing” condition which is manageable by taking medication! In your opinion should I purchase travel insurance? Or if you or someone on your cruise reservation had “pre-existing” conditions that is manageable by taking medications would you purchase travel insurance?

If you do think that I should purchase travel insurance from should I purchase the cruise line travel insurance or is there any other company that sells travel insurance who has lots of clientele and has a very high excellent reviews and ratings that you think I should use? 

ALL THOUGHTS ABOUT VARIOUS TRAVEL INSURANCE COMPANIES, & THE CRUISE LINE TRAVEL INSURANCE IS WELCOME. 

Edited by Bakerette
Reworded to make sense and & a few sentences
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We always use GeoBlue travel insurance for our cruises. The cost is very reasonable ($114 for both the wife and I) and we are "senior citizens". It is a $1,000,000, zero deductable policy and covers a lot more costs than the cruise line insurance. It even include lost luggage as well as travel delays. We started getting the outside insurance after cruising with another gentleman who had to use his and fortunately he had the coverage as the cruise line insurance would not have touched what he was charged. There are many choices out there and there are several threads on this blog talking about them.
 

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I always buy through tripinsurance.com .  They carry three different types of insurance and you choose which meet your needs and budget. The reason I go with them is because they are always extremely helpful any time I have a question about various policies. or my individual policy. I always speak with one of the same two people, which is nice for me - I don't feel lost in a huge corporation (which it  probably isn't).

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53 minutes ago, Matt said:

Be sure that whatever policy you buy covers the scenarios you have in mind.

I second, third, and forth this! It's boring but skim the policy ... at a bare minimum go over the bullets and click any indicators (foot note things) of "who/what/where/when/why" something is covered that you want/need to understand it fully.

With that, I use travelguard.com for cruises, while my Sapphire Reserve does provide some protection, I don't always pay with that card and I get peace of mind from a full policy.

I normally wait until after final payment before buying a policy, Travel Guard doesn't seem to have any benefit to buying before I am "all in" on the trip.

Edited by sk8erguy1978
add when I buy
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2 hours ago, sk8erguy1978 said:

I normally wait until after final payment before buying a policy, Travel Guard doesn't seem to have any benefit to buying before I am "all in" on the trip.

Absolutely agree with @sk8erguy1978, we wait until the week before we leave on any cruises as there is no "early bird" discounts and once purchased, you bought it.

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We never gave trip insurance a thought until January of this year when we saw someone evacuated out of Labadee on a medical helicopter.  My wife and I both looked at each other with the same thought...."what if??"  In addition, we both have things that could be considered pre-existing, so we decided to learn more about travel insurance.

After a lot research and asking for recommendations, we went with Allianz on a per trip basis for our two upcoming cruises (as opposed to a yearly plan).  Prices were very reasonable, and we met their requirements for pre-existing conditions.  

As we get older and into (semi) retirement, we will probably go with a yearly plan, but for now, single trip plans meet our worst case scenario needs.



 

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2 hours ago, teddy said:

After a lot research and asking for recommendations, we went with Allianz on a per trip basis for our two upcoming cruises (as opposed to a yearly plan).  

We went with Allianz also based on a recommendation from our MEI TA. We like the fact that Allianz just moved our policy from this years cruise to next years. A little different from some of the stories I've heard about other travel insurance companies out there. I hope we don't have to find out how they handle a claim!

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4 hours ago, teddy said:

We never gave trip insurance a thought until January of this year when we saw someone evacuated out of Labadee on a medical helicopter.

I only have 1 image from when I first got into photography with an old PowerShot S1 IS that came out with too much noise to share, BUT our second cruise, first ever Royal Caribbean, the United States Coast Guard evacuated someone from our ship while we were in route to Bermuda. Believe it or not, it still took a few years before I embraced Travel Insurance, I mean I have health coverage from work, I'm good, right? (<-- I know better now :)).

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On 7/9/2020 at 8:54 AM, Matt said:

I think travel insurance is a great idea for a lot of people, but the biggest mistake with travel insurance is not understanding what it covers (and doesnt cover).

Be sure that whatever policy you buy covers the scenarios you have in mind.

@MattWhich company would you recommend that has the best & cheapest travel insurance that includes cancel for any reason, lost luggage, delayed luggage, medical evacuation, hospital stays, visits to the onboard medical center, necessary & purchases onboard the cruise ship/in ports of call because of lost or delayed luggage.

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On 7/9/2020 at 9:12 AM, SpeedNoodles said:

I always buy through tripinsurance.com .  They carry three different types of insurance and you choose which meet your needs and budget. The reason I go with them is because they are always extremely helpful any time I have a question about various policies. or my individual policy. I always speak with one of the same two people, which is nice for me - I don't feel lost in a huge corporation (which it  probably isn't).

Wow, you sound exactly like the commercial!  ?

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4 hours ago, Bakerette said:

@MattWhich company would you recommend that has the best & cheapest travel insurance that includes cancel for any reason, lost luggage, delayed luggage, medical evacuation, hospital stays, visits to the onboard medical center, necessary & purchases onboard the cruise ship/in ports of call because of lost or delayed luggage.

I'm afraid I'm not aware of such a policy. 

I buy an annual plan from Allianz, but it does not cover cancel for any reason..

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1 hour ago, WAAAYTOOO said:

I recently renewed my annual Allianz policy and was told that it does not cover any kind of travel delay or interruption due to CV-19 but it cover illness-related issues.  So, if you get CV-19 while on a cruise it would cover hospitalization and emergency evacuation/repatriation.

Might be a silly question but would you have a recommendation on when it makes sense to go with the annual?  Is it 2, 3 trips or more?

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11 minutes ago, cruisellama said:

Might be a silly question but would you have a recommendation on when it makes sense to go with the annual?  Is it 2, 3 trips or more?

Not silly at all, but a very prudent question.

In our case, once we were doing 4 or more cruises per year, we decided that it was worthwhile to get the annual policy.  We look at it a lot like we do the Deluxe Beverage Package.  It really isn't about saving money, it's about the convenience.  Our annual policy has been $623 per year for the past 3 years so I assume that is the price that it's going to be for the foreseeable future.  We have been doing between 6-9 cruises per year. The annual policy definitely saves money over buying individual trip plans but even if it didn't, we would still do the annual policy.

For one thing, the annual policy is not just for cruises.  It is any travel that we do (of course, neither of us is traveling at all right now....but that's an anomaly) and in the recent past, both Dan and I traveled a lot for work.  Are there less expensive annual policies ?  Sure.  But we have the most inclusive policy that they offer with high limits b/c we cruise in suites most of the time and the $$ value of the overall trips is fairly high.  Now that I am on Medicare, I would not have health insurance coverage outside of the US if I didn't purchase it elsewhere.  It is mainly for this reason that we have travel insurance.

Here are the coverage caps:

 

image.thumb.png.ebce5f7e6f87548312886191139b6735.png

image.thumb.png.102e3b4926d1ad5fcd57732245e3f143.png

 

I came across the following, related to COVID while I was looking up the coverage caps :

image.png.4f2be54a4c1036d8b26141d9638e569c.png

 

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9 minutes ago, WAAAYTOOO said:

Not silly at all, but a very prudent question.

In our case, once we were doing 4 or more cruises per year, we decided that it was worthwhile to get the annual policy.  We look at it a lot like we do the Deluxe Beverage Package.  It really isn't about saving money, it's about the convenience.  Our annual policy has been $623 per year for the past 3 years so I assume that is the price that it's going to be for the foreseeable future.  We have been doing between 6-9 cruises per year. The annual policy definitely saves money over buying individual trip plans but even if it didn't, we would still do the annual policy.

For one thing, the annual policy is not just for cruises.  It is any travel that we do (of course, neither of us is traveling at all right now....but that's an anomaly) and in the recent past, both Dan and I traveled a lot for work.  Are there less expensive annual policies ?  Sure.  But we have the most inclusive policy that they offer with high limits b/c we cruise in suites most of the time and the $$ value of the overall trips is fairly high.  Now that I am on Medicare, I would not have health insurance coverage outside of the US if I didn't purchase it elsewhere.  It is mainly for this reason that we have travel insurance.

Here are the coverage caps:

 

image.thumb.png.ebce5f7e6f87548312886191139b6735.png

image.thumb.png.102e3b4926d1ad5fcd57732245e3f143.png

 

I came across the following, related to COVID while I was looking up the coverage caps :

image.png.4f2be54a4c1036d8b26141d9638e569c.png

 

Very helpful.  We have 4 cruises  booked over the next 12 months (starting Nov if that goes).   And we do occasionally have add-on flights in between.  I had already purchased individual policies, but in reading them, it appears they can be cancelled 14 days prior to the cruise.   I did the preliminary math and appears I do come out ahead on an annual policy over the individuals.   So may make the jump if I can.  Thanks again!

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12 minutes ago, cruisellama said:

Very helpful.  We have 4 cruises  booked over the next 12 months (starting Nov if that goes).   And we do occasionally have add-on flights in between.  I had already purchased individual policies, but in reading them, it appears they can be cancelled 14 days prior to the cruise.   I did the preliminary math and appears I do come out ahead on an annual policy over the individuals.   So may make the jump if I can.  Thanks again!

My pleasure !!!  Good luck

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We started to purchase TI as we got older and our vacations got more expensive.  We had 2 good experiences in the last year. My wife put her back out on a cruise.. first, the medical experience on board ship was amazing and they gave her the 'good stuff'. We submitted a claim and got reimbursed with no issues.

This year we got a full refund of the TI policy for our cancelled cruise.. took a while but it was nice to get the cost of the policy refunded.

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I opted to take out an annual plan last September as I had several land trips I was taking in addition to cruises.  Single trip insurance premiums tended to run about 10% of the trip cost, so it made sense for me to have the annual policy.  The caveat with the annual policies is you need to look at the coverage limits to make sure it's going to provide the benefits you are looking for.  None of my single trips were going to be overly expense, so it made sense.  If I ever booked an expensive trip, I would consider adding on a separate trip policy.  If you want cancel for any reason coverage, that's an expensive rider for a travel policy and it often only indemnifies you for 75% of the trip loss. 

I always emphasize to anyone shopping for insurance that the most important component you want to shop for are the losses that would financially devastate you and coverage for unforeseen events.  While it would be horrible to miss out on a trip that you had paid for because something unforeseen happened, and it would be nice to get the money you sunk into the trip back, at the time that you cancel it's already spent money at that point. 

What isn't already spent money is if you get injured or sick on the trip or need to be medically evacuated.  If someone in your immediate family at home gets sick and you have to incur last minute flight costs from a foreign country to get home.  Any unforeseen costs you would have to dig into your pocket for in the event something happens, that is what you want to insure against and you want to make sure that the limits and coverage conditions are adequate for you.

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13 minutes ago, crisgold52 said:

Yes and as a matter of record, most plans do not cover anything related to Covid-19 including RCL's own AON Insurance. Just spoke with three different agents at RCL about Aon which has a medical premium. And all three agents advised that even their own policy despite having a medical premium as part of coverage do not cover Covid-19 in  any form be it evacuations, treatments, etc. It will be very risky for anyone used to travelling with coverage for all aspects of travel to now have this clause in there about Covid-19 being a known event. If and when the US is out of the public health crisis, there's a chance then that the insurance carriers would then cover Covid-19. This goes for us here in Canada as well and as a Canadian doing a US based cruise, the sky rocketing prices of your hospitals compared to our subsidized health care system in Canada is night and day. So one should hope to not get Covid-19 and as per the three agents at RCL whom I spoke with... they too have their own personal reservations about sailing at this point especially in 2020.

It's good to understand all exclusions for whatever policy you are considering. 

Most people are surprised that insurance doesn't work exactly the way they would expect it to when they're faced with a potential loss.   If you incur costs to mitigate your risk, the risk mitigation becomes the reason for the loss and most insurance policies won't cover that.  At least most carriers are providing the upfront transparency about not covering COVID-19.

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