Pack Your Bags! Get Some Travel Insurance With Me

I'm looking for good cheap travel insurance. I have a week before I leave for my holiday and I need to get a policy quick! I'm going to write about my experience trying to find a policy that will cover 2 adults for a 36 day trip. It’s a long holiday I know! If you ever have to look for insurance I hope that you can refer to this article and learn from my experience.

For every trip that I take I spend quite a bit of time organizing. I usually do a bit of pre-holiday shopping, get a haircut so I will look good on the beach and make a list of the items I need to pack. Before I start packing I get my travel insurance!

I am going overseas for an extended period of time and I’m hunting for comprehensive travel insurance package to keep me covered for any nasty eventualities on my trip. I like to start the process by writing down a few of the problems I am most worried about on my travel. This can vary on the type of trip that you are doing and the destination that you are going on.

If I was taking a ski holiday I might priorities cover for personal injury or damage to my ski equipment. This trip isn’t an action filled holiday, I might do a bit of snorkeling but my main concerns are:

1- Making sure I get to my destinations and home again in one piece (with all my luggage).

2- Cover for health/accident related problems that might occur.

3 -Having cover for any theft, loss or damage to my possessions while I'm away. Travelling for a month

means that I have a lot of luggage. I don’t want to worry about my precious laptop and camera!

Now that I have a few priorities I’m going to start my search.

Internet comparison websites really do make life a lot easier. I've carried out a couple of searches on Confused.com and MoneySuperMarket.com. The lowest prices for a travelling couple on a holiday longer than 30 days is about £40 pounds up to a maximum of £230 pounds for luxury travel insurance! I’m not going to consider the policies as I can see that the luggage cover values are too low.

Later I'll need to check out the maximum single item cover limit for baggage as expensive single items such as laptops and camera might fall outside of some of these policies.

I've decided to use quotes from Confused.com only as I am pushed for time and they offer the largest comparison of insurers at the moment. If I had more time I would look at hitting up MoneySupermarket and others comparison sites as then I could get a larger comparison.

So here are my chosen runners -

TRAVEL INSURER Premium Medical Cancellation Baggage Excess

Travel Insurance Genie £57.20 £10 Mill £2K £1.5K £65

Travel Plan Online £57.50 £10 Mill £5K £1K £100

Swift Cover £62.19 £10 Mill £2K £2K £75

Direct Travel Insurance £72 £10 Mill £3K £1.5K £50

There is a £15 difference between the most expensive and least expensive policies. Looking at them closely it is going to be interesting to see what I can get for my money’s worth.

MEDICAL COVER

Medical cover for all the policies is pretty similar at £10 million. You might think that this is a lot of money but you have to keep in mind that it can be expensive paying for doctors and hospitals when abroad. Just as you don't get to go to the Grand Canyon for free the US aren’t going to pay for your stay at the local hospital. Breaking your leg in other part so the Continent can be very expensive especially if you have to abandon your holiday and pay for alternative transport home.

CANCELLATIONS

UK weather has been pretty temperamental recently. I am not counting on a nice day for my departure so I'm keeping one eye on the forecast in case I have to set out a few hours early to make it to the airport. I haven't noticed too many news items about flight cancellations but another bout of snow and ice could make trains and buses a trial. To be sure I want a decent amount of cover for cancellations.

Travel Plan Online has the largest provision for cancellations of the four with £5000. The first leg of our trip London to LA and I don’t think that a replacement flight would cost more that £2000. If you are planning on travelling business or first class you would need to have a higher cover amount for cancellations. For my purposes £2000 is just fine as my flights for the whole trip didn't cost that much!

So looking at the competition so far the policies are level pegging, price aside.

BAGGAGE

It is difficult making a figure for the value of your suitcase contents...especially when I haven't packed yet! Having written a list of what I will pack I think that if I lost all of my clothes, toiletries, camera, laptop and other gadgets I would be looking at over a £1000 to replace everything. The policies under investigation cover between £1000 and £2000 for baggage. So at the baggage hurdle Travel Plan Online has tripped up and fallen out of the race!

As Travel Plan Online didn’t provide a high enough value on baggage I am casting them aside. Interestingly enough Travel Plan Online had the highest excess £25 -£50 more than their competitors. If a customer have to make a claim for contents over £1000 the maximum pay out would amount to only £900!

Something to keep in mind for later is whether the survivors provide cover as new for old or 2nd hand value.

EXCESS

So the competition is down 3 insurers now with excesses ranging between £50 and £75. At this early stage I'm not swayed towards any one company so I'll consider excess later in the piece if the running is close between contenders.

JUDGEMENT SO FAR

Here is my competition table after looking at the basic offers from comparison tables.

TRAVEL INSURER Premium Medical Cancellation Baggage Excess

Travel Insurance Genie £57.20 £10 Mill £2K £1.5K £65

Swift Cover £62.19 £10 Mill £2K £2K £75

Direct Travel Insurance £72 £10 Mill £3K £1.5K £50

I’ve considered price and checked if my basic requirements for travel insurance would be covered.

Travel Plan Online has been crossed out of the competition as in hindsight they would not be able to cover the whole value of my baggage.

If I had to pick a winner at this point it would be Travel Insurance Genie. Based on the bare facts their price is good, they offer a decent amount of medical cover, pretty good cancellation and baggage cover amounts too with a competitive excess at £65.

Next I want to do some research into the service and history of these companies and see if I can dig up any dirt on their performance! Stay tuned for more on my adventures shopping for travel insurance.