If you don’t want to lose the money you spent on your trip in case of an accident, buying travel insurance might be a good idea. For instance, travel insurance can pay you if you have to stop your trip because of something out of your control or if you get hurt while traveling and your health insurance doesn’t cover it.
To get the best deal on travel insurance, you don’t want to give up the security that comes with the best plans. To help tourists on a budget, we looked at 53 different travel insurance plans and chose the five cheapest ones that still offer good coverage.
How to Get the Best Deal on Travel Insurance
When it comes to insurance, comparing plans from different companies can save you a lot of money. Travel insurance plans usually cover most of the same things, but Steven Benna, a spokesman for Squaremouth, a company that compares travel insurance, says that the price and amount of coverage can change a lot from policy to policy.
The Forbes Advisor list of the best travel insurance companies is a good place to start. You can also get help from a trip insurance expert. That person can help you figure out what kind of service you need and then compare prices.
Find out exactly what your travel insurance will cover.
Benna says that you can escape spending too much on trip insurance by knowing what you should cover. For instance, it’s important to know that trip loss insurance will only pay back non-refundable trip costs that you already paid for. So Benna says don’t buy coverage for the parts of your trip that you can get your money back on.
Avoid buying travel insurance that you don’t need.
For instance, many tourists buy extra “cancel for any reason” insurance on top of their regular trip canceling insurance. Most of the time, it makes your trip insurance plan cost 50% more. If you stop your trip for a reason that isn’t covered by the base policy, like having a fight with your traveling partner, the update will pay you for some of your trip costs.
It might be a good idea to buy travel insurance once a year.
If you only go on one or two trips a year, it makes sense to get travel insurance for each one. But if you want to go on more than one trip, it’s difficult and expensive to buy an insurance for each one. The main purpose of annual travel insurance plans is to offer better total price and medical insurance for multiple trips.
These kinds of annual contracts can make it easier to buy just one instead of several. They could also be a good way for people who plan to take a lot of local trips to get travel insurance. Once a year travel rules might not make sense if you’re going on road trips, though.
Travel insurance should be valued above its cost.
When you buy trip insurance, price shouldn’t be the only thing that matters. It won’t be worth it in the end to buy cheap travel insurance that doesn’t cover much. Lisa Cheng, who works for the travel insurance company World Nomads, says, “Shop for value.” “Plans with low prices might have high deductibles and low benefit limits for a reason.”
Cheng says that if you buy cheap travel insurance, you might find that the medical coverage is only $5,000 when you have a $8,000 hospital bill from your trip. Shop around, but don’t skimp on coverage that’s important to you, like medical or trip cancelation insurance.
