So someone has reached out and asked: "Is it too late to buy travel insurance?"
We always remind guests that the very best time to purchase simple low cost Travel Insurance to protect your investment in your vacation is when you first sign up for a trip and make your very first payment! Then you're protected from that point onward to the end of your vacation. To get the most benefits from a Travel Insurance policy, it's very important to purchase the policy immediately (10 -21 days) after you make the first payment for your trip (the deposit). If you do this, most policies will cover "pre-existing conditions". But it's never too late to buy travel insurance! (Well, maybe after you leave, it's too late... and of course it's a little tough to find home insurance when your house is on fire...)
Some folks think: "Why do I need travel Insurance, I'm not going to cancel." So no one ever plans to cancel, but as the old saying goes "Sh*t Happens!" As you might imagine, in our 24 years of running Group Tours for hundreds and hundreds of guests, we've seen folks have to cancel for a variety of reasons - from broken ankles to broken marriages. But travel insurance isn't just about trip cancellation... That's just a small part of the coverage. Most comprehensive Most Travel Insurance policies cover a variety of health, medical, dental, trip interruption, baggage loss, baggage delay, and even trip cancellation issues for covered reasons (ie: job loss, sickness, car accident, jury duty, natural disasters, etc). Many/most domestic health/medical insurances, including Medicare, provides no or limited coverage when out of the country... (On a personal note, we recently used our Travel Insurance policy to cover our expenses related to a 2 day unexpected delay on our return home from Italy due to an Air Traffic Controllers strike. Our policy covered approximately $1000 in expenses for hotels/meals/taxis/etc.)
Many Tour Operators make Travel Insurance mandatory, and every Travel Agent recommends it... But while we don't sell or make Travel Insurance mandatory, we remind guests that with our very unique Boutique business model (leasing an entire Villa) and contracting with many of our vendors and suppliers for fixed price services, your deposits & all payments are non-refundable, so if YOU would need to cancel your trip for some reason, your Travel Insurance provider could provide your refund to help soften the financial blow. So as a practical application, when guests contact us to tell us they need to cancel, we refer them to their Travel Insurance provider.
