Featured Image: Accidents are bound to happen, but planning ahead with travel insurance may help keep the smile on your face in the event of a mishap / Photo credit: The Visuals You Need on Adobe Stock

You don’t appreciate the value of travel insurance until you need it

by Amanda Burgess

JourneyWomen are seasoned travellers who have circled the globe a time or two. We’ve learned some hard lessons. Life has given us more than our share of challenges and setbacks.

So, it wasn’t surprising to us when the results of our recent global study of 1,500 JourneyWomen – Embracing the Unknown: The Risk and Reward of Travel – showed that the majority of women buy travel insurance.

Pre-pandemic, most women purchased comprehensive coverage. However, there are some differences between the US and Canada. Americans are less likely to buy insurance. Perhaps because they are more risk-adverse, Canadians are more likely to purchase medical insurance than Americans, whereas Americans are more likely to purchase cancellation insurance only.

While data gives you a wealth of insights, personal stories bring context and a human dimension to any issue. That’s why we asked to JourneyWomen everywhere to tell us why you purchase travel insurance, or why you don’t. The times you’ve been caught in a situation overseas without it. And the times where the unexpected happens, you submit a claim and you thank yourself for the foresight of covering yourself with insurance.

While her total costs were not astronomical – about $1,800 with treatment and new flights home – the experience taught her a valuable lesson. “Since that trip, my sister makes sure I have bought travel insurance. I have a little more money now and am 66, so I know how valuable it is.”

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SafetyWing Nomad Insurance (Global)

SafetyWing offers long-term travel insurance that renews on a monthly basis. Get started here.

Insure My Trip

Compare quotes from various insurance providers to find the best option. Learn more here.

Other articles of interest: 

Five Questions to ask your insurance broker before buying Insurance 

 Buy Travel Insurance That’s Right for You 

 Travel Medical Insurance: What does your plan cover? 

When a last-minute decision to buy travel insurance gives you the support you expect – and more that you never considered

When planning a trip to Sri Lanka in 2006, Sally Jane Smith’s travel agent asked her if she wanted insurance. She dithered over the choice, told the agent she’d think about it and come back to her.

“The decision rested on whether I would take my camera – my most prized possession – on the trip. If I took my camera, I’d take out insurance,” she says. “I took the camera, and the policy. I remember so well looking at that little checkbox. I was travelling on the bare bones of cheap, and the few dollars difference seemed significant. Thank heavens I ticked that box!”

While travelling solo through Sri Lanka, the bus Sally was riding collided with another bus. A third bus stopped, and its passengers poured out to collect the wounded. They carried Sally and others into the third bus and whisked them back to the village where she’d spent the previous night.

“The hospital there was primitive – and has since been replaced by a modern hospital – but its surgical staff were excellent. I had been snacking on cashew nuts just before the collision, so I had to wait for six hours on a gurney in a busy corridor for an operation to remove glass from my body and put a total of 38 stitches into my neck, forehead, knee, and one unlucky finger,” she says. “Thankfully – especially given that I had no MRI or CAT scans done at the village hospital, there wasn’t even a neck brace – my suspected neck injuries turned out to be just whiplash. I say just, but it was incredibly painful, and I was flat on my back for a long time, unable to go to the toilet unassisted for about a week.”

Through the ordeal, Sally witnessed first-hand the kindness of strangers. A man named Aruna helped her from the village hospital to one of the best private hospitals in Colombo. He contacted her insurance company and made all of the arrangements while she was immobilized in a hospital bed. The insurance company wanted to send an ambulance for her, but since that would add five hours to her ordeal, Aruna convinced the insurer to let him hire a car and driver to bring her to Colombo himself. He even found her a neck support.

“We arrived at the private hospital in the capital in the middle of the night, and the insurance rep, Mrs. Fernando, was waiting for me. She visited me regularly in the hospital, brought me a book to read, organized an optometrist to replace my glasses – he came to my bedside – and dealt with the changes to my travel arrangements, as well as keeping my family informed,” she says. “I was not capable of arranging anything in the condition I was in. Many think that the assistance you get is just about the money, but it is also about someone taking care of bureaucracy when you’re in no state to do it yourself.”

She didn’t pay a cent towards her hospital bills, including one night in the village hospital and eleven days in a private room in Colombo. Insurance covered her new glasses, and three nights in a hotel after she was discharged but not yet cleared to fly.

“They flew in a special nurse and paid for both of us to fly business class from Colombo to Abu Dhabi, where I was living at the time, and for an ambulance transfer from the airport to my flat,” she says. “They also covered the majority of the costs for my sister to fly from Australia to Sri Lanka to the United Arab Emirates and back to Australia to allow Tassin to handle my discharge from the hospital, stay with me in the hotel, fly with me to Abu Dhabi and spend some time with me there to get me settled. It was many weeks before I was able to leave my flat.”

One thing that Sally wants everyone to know is that with her policy, from the moment the ambulance delivered her to her Abu Dhabi flat, the insurance cover ceased. Any follow-up treatment was up to her, so she paid for medical check-ups and having her stitches removed. Now, she recommends not rushing to get home unless you’re covered.

“I don’t know how much money the insurance company expended, but it would have been devastating to me financially if I had to cover it on my own! If I hadn’t had travel insurance, I’d have been stuck in a village hospital without a neck support after my accident,” she says. “To someone who thinks they don’t need travel insurance, I say: Please rethink. Please, please rethink. I know that when one is travelling on a strict budget, every dollar counts, but I cannot stress enough how dire a situation you can land in without travel medical insurance. They don’t only pay the bills – they help you get the care you need.”

Shannon never considered insurance, until…

Shannon W. was once among those who never considered travel insurance. It was an added expense she couldn’t afford. When she started travelling solo in 2010, it still wasn’t on her radar. In 2011, when she booked her first guided group tour, they automatically added insurance, which she declined due to cost.

“The first time I purchased travel insurance was when I booked a guided group tour of Prague, Vienna, Budapest and Salzburg that started and ended in Munich. I’m not sure if I purchased the insurance because it was lumped in with the price of the trip, or because I was turning 40 later that year, but I’m glad I did because I wound up in a hospital in Budapest for a week!” she says.

Her tour bus left Munich on May 20, 2013. On the 22nd in Vienna, she felt a twinge in her right leg. By the night of the 23rd, when the group arrived in Budapest, her right leg was swollen and she was in pain. It kept her awake all night. She had a limited international cell phone/data plan, but began Googling her symptoms. The next morning, she could barely walk. Knowing they’d be on the bus for most of the next day, she told her guide she needed to see a doctor – and she was taken to Dr. Rose Medical Center – a private hospital in Budapest favoured by ex-pats.

“I remember the doctor telling me I had two blood clots in my leg and I had two choices – they could immediately admit me to Dr. Rose or they would call an ambulance to take me to one of the national Hungarian hospitals. I chose to stay at Dr. Rose and received the best care. The guide came back to bring my suitcase and complete the paperwork since I was leaving the tour early and then I was on my own,” Shannon says. “The nurses did not speak English and the doctors very little. During business hours, they would bring in someone from the Finance Department who spoke English to translate. We managed to communicate as best we could and everyone was so nice and friendly.”

Her sister handled all communication with her insurer as it was expensive to make international calls with her mobile plan. The insurer would call her in her hospital room and liaise with the hospital’s finance department. She felt supported the entire time – with a single point of contact whose days-off backup knew her case so she wouldn’t have to tell her story again.

“I looked up my receipt, I paid $179 for the travel insurance. My health insurance paid 80% of the hospital stay – and the total for my visit was around $14,000. Travel insurance paid the hospital the additional 20% directly, I was not out of pocket one cent for the hospital stay,” she says. “I was also reimbursed 100% for my three-night hotel stay in Budapest and one night in Munich, all meals, the unused train ticket, the flight from Budapest to Munich and the cost to fly home in business class, per doctor’s instructions. These expenses were out of pocket, but I was reimbursed less than six weeks after returning home. $179 saved me almost $17,000 in unexpected expenses.”

To those who are on the fence about travel insurance, Shannon recommends a bit of research on what insurance covers, doesn’t cover, and the difference between a separate travel insurance policy and what is covered by your credit card.
“Think about your destination and know that hospitals in other countries are not what you are used to at home. I got lucky that my guide knew about a private hospital. I cannot even begin to imagine how different my experience would be in a national Hungarian hospital, alone, upset and scared. Talk to friends and read travel blogs,” she says.

When a cruise doesn’t go swimmingly, but travel insurance offers a life raft

Diane W. and her husband Shelly have purchased travel medical insurance for as long as she can remember. Shelly has a tendency to pick up a bug while they travel, so the insurance has come in handy more than once.

Once on a Caribbean cruise, Shelly had to be treated on board ship, then airlifted off the ship, and helicoptered to another island before being transferred by Medivac to a Fort Lauderdale hospital. “It turned out all right, but the cost of this was significant and the medical help we received was invaluable,” she says. “There were two insurers involved – our work health plan insurer and the insurer for the plan I purchased when I booked our flights – and both were amazingly supportive throughout. That was only the second time that I had ever purchased additional insurance. The cost was peanuts, so I clicked yes – and it really did come in handy.”

The health plan insurer was extremely cooperative and supportive when the ship’s clinic contacted them. They agreed to all of the arrangements for airlifting off the ship and transport to the hospital.

“The bottom line: Shelly was released from hospital a few hours later, we booked into a hotel, slept like a log, then I contacted the insurer to update them and to find out if they would permit us to continue our trip as soon as possible,” she says. “They contacted the hospital very quickly to get the official diagnosis and results of tests, and within a few hours they authorized our return to the ship.”

That’s where the second insurer comes in, because their health plan policy didn’t cover trip interruption costs, but the policy Diane purchased when she booked their flights did. While being airlifted, she spent some time reading that policy to better understand what types of costs would be covered and discovered that it was fairly broad and could possibly cover extra costs such as the return to the ship – and at worst, costs to return home early.

“While waiting for the permission from our health insurer to continue our trip, I was on the phone with the trip interruption insurer to find out what options we had. They quickly confirmed that coverage was there to cover the additional costs to get back to the ship – an overnight stay in Fort Lauderdale, transportation back to the ship, one night in a hotel while waiting for the ship, and meals,” she says. “I had also placed a call to the cruise ship head office to find out how we could get back on the ship — and they were also great. When all was said and done, it took less than a few hours to get the insurers and the cruise line on board, and by evening we were flying to the Cayman Islands to meet our ship and were back on the ship the following day. All of costs except for one of the meals was paid for by insurers, and the majority of the costs were paid by the insurer directly to the service provider.”

It was a massive relief to Diane and Shelly – who really wanted and needed that vacation and would have been disappointed if they’d had to cut it short. They’d have been more disappointed if they didn’t have insurance and had to pay some hefty bills out of pocket. The incident cost approximately US$30,000 ($18,000 for the airlift and transport to hospital, $10,800 in medical costs onboard the ship and in hospital, $1,200 transportation and lodging costs.

“You need to understand the coverage that your credit card insurer provides — are you covered and, if so, to what extent? It all depends on what you can afford and what type of risks that you’re willing to take,” she says. “Whether you believe it can happen to you or not, it does happen. Can you afford all of the medical costs or the interruption/cancellation costs related to a trip?”

When heart issues give the uninsured heartburn abroad

As a resident of the US Virgin Islands, Patsy H. doesn’t qualify for coverage from any of the usual insurance companies – the price paid for living in paradise. When she and her husband retired in 2005, they had the flexibility, if not the funds, to travel as they’d like. They discovered housesitting, and the Gypsy Hirsts were born.

“Our first sit was in Napanee, just outside Toronto. While there, we booked a next sit in New Hampshire, and during that sit nailed one in France! For the next several years, we left our island home early spring, returning late fall,” she says. “I don’t remember that we considered travel insurance for those first few years. We did have some coverage with our American Youth Hostel (Senior) membership, but they stopped offering it when we really needed it.”

That was the year they’d finished their season of house-sits and had moved on to Agde in Southern France to celebrate Patsy’s 70th birthday. They enjoyed a few days along the canal, but Patsy noticed that her husband Jack didn’t seem himself.

“Sure enough, his heart was giving problems and we ended up calling the owners of the tiny apartment we’d rented, who came with the medics. They took him to the nearest hospital, in Sete. The wonderful owners took me under their wings, luckily an Irish/American couple, so English speaking. They waited with me at the hospital till early morning hours, only leaving when we were told Jack was stable. I stayed till morning when I could see him, then took a very expensive taxi ride back,” she says.

Patsy has nothing good to say about the French hospital experience. Muddling through on limited French added an extra layer of anxiety to an already stressful situation. Jack had surgery to place a stent in his heart, and a relapse sent him back to the hospital one more time before their train through Spain and Portugal en route to their cruise home. The experience sent Patsy off in search for travel insurance coverage.

“With both age and location against us, I found the Schengen information for those getting Schengen visas. I was able to get just the insurance part before we traveled to Europe next time. Lots of paperwork, of course, but they did pay up when needed,” she says.

The bottom line

Travel insurance is a necessary evil. An added expense that guards against astronomical costs when the unexpected occurs. Which it does with greater regularity than many assume, regardless of age.

Before dismissing the idea of insurance, do your due diligence. Read policies and contracts before you buy. Research your destination’s health care system to determine how they handle services for foreign visitors. Determine how much you can afford to lose if you find yourself in an emergency situation. If the cost of travel insurance gives you heartburn, consider these stories as cautionary tales.

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