Trip Cancellation: The One Everyone Knows

This is where most people's understanding of trip insurance starts and stops. You get sick, a family member has an emergency, something unexpected happens before you leave — and you get your nonrefundable money back. It's a legitimate benefit, and for expensive trips it alone can justify the premium.

But cancellation coverage is the floor, not the ceiling. The clients who've been most grateful they had a policy weren't the ones who had to cancel. They were the ones who made it to their destination and then had something go wrong.

Medical Care & Prescriptions Abroad

Most domestic health insurance plans have limited or no coverage outside the United States. If you need medical care abroad — a real diagnosis, diagnostic tests, hospitalization — you're looking at out-of-pocket costs with no guarantee of familiar systems, familiar billing, or anyone who speaks your language.

The travel protection plans we recommend cover actual medical expenses incurred during your trip, subject to coverage limits and the requirement that you seek treatment from a professional medical establishment and keep your documentation. For smaller expenses, you pay upfront and file for reimbursement when you return. For serious situations requiring significant funding, the emergency concierge can sometimes help arrange payment on the front end.

I've used this coverage for something as minor as a prescription refill I forgot to bring on a trip. It happened in Miami, so finding a pharmacy wasn't exactly a challenge, but the plan was too early for my regular insurance to cover — I paid out of pocket, saved the receipt, filed a claim, and was fully reimbursed. Low drama. Exactly how it should work.

Medical Evacuation: The One That Can Bankrupt You

Medical evacuation is the coverage people least want to think about and most need to understand. If you require emergency transport home — or to a qualified medical facility — the cost can easily reach six figures. Air ambulances don't negotiate, and your regular health insurance almost certainly won't cover international evacuation.

The other thing worth understanding: the decision that you need a medevac is made by medical professionals, not by you. You don't get a vote. You just get the bill — unless you have a policy that covers it.

And it doesn't take a life-threatening emergency to trigger one. Stepping off a curb wrong and breaking your ankle in a country with limited orthopedic facilities can be enough.

Trip Interruption: When Things Go Wrong After You've Left

Trip interruption coverage kicks in after departure, when something forces you to cut the trip short. A medical emergency — yours, someone in your party, or a close family member at home. Significant damage to your home. Occasionally, a business situation that can't wait. Whatever the cause, you suddenly need to get home, and getting home on short notice is expensive. Last-minute flights don't have promotional fares.

Trip interruption coverage reimburses those additional costs — subject to the covered reasons and limits in your policy. Think of it as the part of your protection plan that handles everything that cancellation doesn't, because you were already there when it happened.

Travel Delays: More Complicated Than It Should Be

When an airline causes a delay through something the FAA considers avoidable — a mechanical problem, a crew scheduling failure — the airline is supposed to cover food and lodging until they can get you where you're going. In practice, this is inconsistently applied. They're also not required to rebook you on another carrier, or to put you on their next flight — only the next available seat on one of their planes. During peak travel periods, with flights running full, that can mean days.

Travel delay coverage in a protection plan can help cover expenses you incur while you wait. The coverage has its own restrictions and timing requirements — typically a minimum delay threshold before benefits kick in — so it's worth understanding your policy before you need it. The better plans also include a 24/7 travel concierge who can help you navigate the situation in real time, which is often more valuable than the reimbursement.

Lost Luggage: Usually Minor, Occasionally Not

On our very first cruise, we boarded to find that one of our bags had apparently decided to take a different itinerary. The cruise line did what they could, and Janet's packing strategy — which is considerably more redundant than mine — kept the trip from becoming a real problem. Had I packed the way I wanted to, it would have been a disaster. Since this was before we started purchasing travel protection routinely, it would also have been costly.

Lost luggage is usually a manageable inconvenience. The exception is when you're in a remote location, or on a fast-moving itinerary where you're in a different city every night — the window for your bag to find you is short, and the logistics of reuniting with delayed luggage get complicated quickly.

In most cases the airline is responsible for reimbursing you for reasonable replacement purchases while your luggage is located and returned to you. Trip insurance is your backup — covering what the airline doesn't. Always get receipts for anything you purchase to replace items in your delayed bag, and use common sense. If you're traveling to the Caribbean, you probably won't get reimbursed for a cashmere sweater. If your luggage is permanently lost, the plan's coverage supplements what the airline offers, and airline limits are lower than most people realize.

Why the Cheapest Policy Usually Isn't

Online comparison services will cheerfully help you find the lowest-priced trip insurance on the market. The problem is that a low-priced cancellation policy and a comprehensive travel protection plan are not the same product. The first covers one scenario. The second covers the range of things that can go wrong before, during, and after your trip — the ones you planned for and the ones nobody plans for.

Coverage limits, exclusions, and restrictions vary widely between policies, and the differences matter most when you're standing in a foreign hospital or trying to get on a plane during a weather event. The time to understand what your policy does and doesn't cover is before you leave, not while you're trying to use it.

Our job is to make sure you understand what you're buying. The decision of whether to purchase a policy, and which one, is ultimately yours — but it should be a fully informed one.

Who We Use and Why

We recommend TravelSafe for our clients, and we use TravelSafe for our own travel coverage. We landed on them after evaluating the field on both coverage and responsiveness — not just what the policy promises, but what happens when a client actually needs to file a claim or call the concierge at midnight. Janet has developed a direct relationship with the company, which means when we have a question we get a specific answer in writing. In the insurance world, that's rarer than it should be.

TravelSafe's policies are underwritten by United States Fire Insurance Company, which carries an A (Excellent) rating from A.M. Best. They hold an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau and have been in the travel insurance business since 1971. They offer two plan tiers — Basic and Classic — plus an optional Cancel for Any Reason add-on, and their Classic plan includes some coverage you won't find in most comparable policies, including non-medical evacuation coverage for situations like political instability at your destination.

When you book through us, we'll walk you through the options and help you determine what level of coverage makes sense for your specific trip.