Note: I am not an affiliate of this company. I’m simply sharing based on my personal experience.
Soooo…when I got my cancer diagnosis a year ago, I had to cancel four trips. Two weeks in Norway, Northern Yellowstone, a cycling tour through Vermont, and a family trip to Puerto Rico. 😭
The only thing worse than missing those trips was all the non-refundable airfare and hotels I’d booked. But thankfully, I had travel insurance and got every penny back: around $7,200 I think.
Deciding about Travel Insurance
Do you really need travel insurance?
I get it…you’d rather spend your vacation budget on a swank hotel or unique experience while you’re there. But here’s the thing about travel insurance: You don’t need it until you need it.
When I was younger, I traveled without it. But these days, I recommend it for everybody. COVID’s here to stay and if you cancel because you’re ill due to COVID, most travel insurance companies will cover it.
The truth is: Plenty of travel insurance companies are happy to take your money.
There are websites you can visit to compare costs from different companies. But…when you read the reviews by people who actually had to make a claim, you’ll generally find a lot of angry, frustrated people who ultimately did not get reimbursed.
My advice is not just to look for the lowest cost of a policy, but to ensure the company you choose also has a solid track record of actually reimbursing travelers for claims.
Beyond travel insurance companies, there are also travel credit cards where you collect miles. The higher tiered cards also include primary travel insurance. (Be sure it’s primary insurance.)
Cards like Chase’s Sapphire Reserve and Capitol One’s Venture X are both cards I’ve held in the past or hold now and I highly recommend them for accruing miles to use on flights and hotels.
Their benefits are worth the $$$ annual fee but NOT due to the travel insurance benefit (although some people report good experiences!).
The one time we made a claim through Chase—after dinging our Croatian rental car in an eensy teensy parking lot—they wouldn’t reimburse us because the receipt/form the Croatian rental car company gave us didn’t match the one they wanted from a body shop. This is so common!
Insider tip: If you ever have anything stolen during your travels that you want to claim for reimbursement through travel insurance, you must have a copy of a police report so do take time to get one before you leave your destination.
Read more on travel tips:
• 13 Ways to afford more travel
• 3 Tips to avoid bank and credit card fees
• The Ultimate road trip packing list
The Travel Insurance Company I Do Recommend
It’s Allianz. And they’re not perfect either. It can still be a hassle to get reimbursed but after plenty of research and my own experience making a claim, I do think they’re the best of the bunch by far.
Here’s why I like them:
• Fast and easy to get a quote online. It will take you all of two minutes to find out what your trip insurance will cost by using their online calculator. Just enter your age, travel dates, destination, and home state and your quote will pop up.
You’ll note there’s also an option to get an annual quote versus a trip quote. If you’re over 40, I recommend you quote the insurance both ways. If you’re a frequent traveler, you’re likely to find it’s cheaper to get the annual plan.
• Awesome customer service (when buying the policy). If you have any questions at all about what’s covered or which tier plan you should buy, pick up the phone and call them. Their reps are very informed, clear, friendly, and responsive. I wish I could say the same about calling when you have a claim but more about that later.
• They actually reimburse for claims. Seems obvious, right? But, like I said, if you shop insurance and take time to read the reviews, good luck finding companies that travelers say consistently pay out. If you know one, I’d love to hear it!
I recommend you buy direct through Allianz versus through a third party like AAA that may give wrong information about the policy. (Heard about this through a friend’s experience.)
What Happens When You Have an Actual Claim
This is not the fun part. You’ll need to collect A LOT of documentation which is all explained in your policy and email it to Allianz.
If you have a medical claim while on a trip, I recommend calling Allianz to triple check what medical documentation you’ll need and get it before you leave the destination.
It can be near impossible to get anything in a timely way from a foreign hospital or clinic once you’re home.
My mom has had two claims through Allianz and I have had one (for four trips). In all three cases, Allianz reimbursed in full…but they also dragged out the process of paying up.
What seems to happen is you get weekly emails saying they’re still reviewing your claim for a month or two. They may ask for more documentation.
And then, you’ll receive a check in the mail for some portion of your claim. (I suspect they’re hoping you’ll leave it at that.)
So at that point, you’ll need to email them again pointing out they didn’t pay X, Y, and Z and should have all the documentation for that.
Then, they’ll probably split this out as a new claim and ask you for documentation you already sent them a time or two, which you will re-send, until they finally pay up.
The good news is that this all of this tedious back and forth can happen by email. A couple of years ago, you’d have had to talk to their outsourced customer service for claims with people who didn’t speak English well or weren’t very knowledgeable.
So like I said, it’s not perfect but Allianz does pay claims and that’s way more important than saving a buck here or there with one of the many companies that just doesn’t reliably reimburse.
Last Thought on Allianz
One thing I found interesting in my own experience is that my Puerto Rico trip was scheduled outside the dates of my annual insurance plan but I claimed it since I paid for the trip during the dates of the annual plan.
Before I did though, I called Allianz and asked if it would be reimbursed. The customer service rep said it was at the discretion of the claims adjusters (which I thought was a little weird. Seems like they’d have a clear policy for this kind of situation?).
I’m happy to report that they did pay for that whole trip though. I was so grateful. Allianz for life!
If you’ve had great experiences with another company though, I’m all ears. Drop a comment below!
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I have experience with cancelling a trip and receiving reimbursement from Nationwide Travel Insurance. First of all, I will tell you that I first go to the site Squaremouth to compare prices for each trip, so each of my trips is usually insured by a different provider. The one we had to cancel just happened to be insured by Nationwide, but given our experience I will likely continue to use Nationwide. My husband became ill, and we could not go on a scheduled tour of Italy in June. We cancelled in time to get a partial reimbursement from the tour company, and I applied for the remainder, plus the cost of a separate tour I had booked in Rome. I supplied all the requested documentation, including asking our doctor to fill out their required form. Their processing took about a month, and we were fully reimbursed. None of the back and forth or partial reimbursement that you described.
I did not cover our airfare in the insurance I purchased, and tried to apply to the credit card for reimbursement for the plane tickets, but they pointed out that I had a credit with the airline, which we will need to use by a specified date, and if we don’t, we can then try applying with the credit card insurance again.
As to annual insurance, many of our trips are with tours or cruises, so when I researched annual insurance policies, I quickly realized that none would completely cover a year’s worth of trip cancellations, should we receive a devastating diagnosis such as you had. For that reason I insure each trip separately. Yes, it costs more, but is the only way I can be assured of recouping our money should our plans be hijacked for a longer period of time.
May I also say that I am happy to know you are recovering and planning to continue your travels. Your blog about your treatment experience was so helpful to read. Your experience, and other experiences of people we know, are the reason we are traveling as much as we can NOW, and not waiting for… anything.
Thanks JW for your kind thoughts on my recovery and also taking time to share your great experience with Nationwide for readers! Squarespace is a great site to compare travel insurance prices. When I looked into reviews on people who had claims on policies that looked cost-effective, I could never find any consistently good experiences. So I’m happy to hear you did! As to annual policies, I know that Allianz offers three tiers of converage. In 2023, we had tons of travel planned and were looking at a $$$$$ Galapagos cruise and felt the second tier would cover all our travel. Your mileage may vary!
Hi Chris,
Thanks for sending your information on Travel Insurance. My wife and I and two other couples are in the process of planning a 2 week trip to Italy next May. We used a great deal of your information and suggestions when we traveled to Yellowstone and Grand Tetons last fall and you were so helpful in so many ways. I like you, when younger never consider Travel Insurance, now since we are in our 70s, it makes more sense to plan for the unexpectencies. Thanks again and wishing you the very best as you continue to improve with your health. Philip
Thanks so much, Philip. I’m glad it’s helpful! Italy’s one of my favorite countries. Wishing you a fabulous trip!
As we have gotten older, my husband and I have started adding medical evacuation insurance when we travel. We use Medjetassist, which you can purchase as a single use or one-year policy that provides medical evacuation to wherever you want to go with fully equipped jets that can provide mobile intensive care, if needed. One of their testimonials describes a woman who broke her hip and wrist and was taken to a hospital that had feral cats everywhere. The couple didn’t speak the language, but they had their medjetassist card and were out of there within hours.
Ah! Such a good point about making sure your insurance includes evacuation if needed, Lisa. Thanks for weighing in. A friend of mine had a scooter accident in Spain and broke her leg not too long ago. She too was thankful she had insurance that her home in her preferred hospital within 24 hours.