When planning a vacation abroad a big part of that is picking out the right holiday insurance. This article will guide you through what you need to know to get it right.
Book It Straight Away
As soon as your holiday is booked then your insurance should be too. You need to make sure you are covered just in case something happened. It’s not just covering you whilst your away either. For example, if the holiday cannot go ahead for a legitimate reason, you won’t be adversely impacted financially. This happened to us a few years ago as my son was very poorly, and we couldn’t make our trip to Dubai. Without travel insurance we would have lost over £4,000, instead we just lost our travel insurance excess which was only a couple of hundred pounds.
Never Skip It!
My wife is a very risk adverse person so she would never skip holiday insurance anyway. It gives us peace of mind. But we have heard of people who wanted to save the small cost of insuring themselves and ended up losing their house because of the cost of their mounting health bills abroad. It’s just not worth it.
Letting Them Know About Your Health Conditions
It’s very important to be honest about all your pre-existing health conditions when you book travel insurance. You can even choose to use a travel insurance company that specializes in medical conditions. Then if you have to buy holiday insurance with cancer or other conditions you know you have the right level of coverage.
For us as a family I have to always mention I have a fatty liver. My wife on the other hand is asthmatic. If we didn’t mention these then our holiday insurance would be invalid.
Think About Your Activities
Carefully think about what activities you will get up to during your holiday. You want to make sure you get adequate cover for everything you might like to do. Especially if you are a more adventurous person who will want to do scuba diving or white water rafting. We tend to get the highest level of cover as a precaution each time. But even when you do these activities you need to make sure they are done in a safe way, e.g. with horse riding you must wear the helmet.
Read The Terms And Conditions
Always go through the terms and conditions with a fine tooth comb to make sure you are doing everything correctly. It’s amazing how many people don’t get European Health Insurance Card that holiday insurance request when travelling in Europe. A card is free and lasts five years. It’s simple to apply for and quick to arrive, so no excuses not to tick that box!
Medical Tourism
If you are going abroad to have medical treatment, then you will need to have a special insurance policy for this. It’s not a holiday as such and comes with risks and complications so make sure you get adequate cover.
Don’t Invalidate Your Cover
Make sure you are very sensible on your holiday. You can invalidate your insurance with risky behaviour that could be seen to have jeopardised your health, such as drinking heavily or taking drugs.
Educate Others On Its Importance
Apparently, a lot of younger people don’t see the importance of travel insurance. They are healthy, plus they do not think they have anything particularly valuable. But you never know what might happen so get them to add it to their pre-holiday checklist. They weigh up what they think the financial risk is but don’t really understand the consequences. A lost case might be manageable to replace so they don’t see what the fuss is about. However, an operation in a foreign country can be an obscene amount of money.