There is nothing that feels less worthwhile than spending money on purchasing travel insurance when you are almost certain you won’t use it. After all, how many times have you been in a serious accident or contracted a dangerous illness? And what are the chances this will happen while on holiday? But it’s the more common, minor setbacks that can spiral out of control and not only ruin your holiday, but end up costing you a fortune. You don’t need to fall out of an aeroplane to find yourself in an expensive pickle, and all it takes is a series of small unfortunate events to ruin your holiday. Cheap travel insurance would only cost you a few extra pounds, and could end up saving you many.
Lost Luggage is not the End of the World
Your well deserved holiday has finally arrived, and you shake off your work stress and prepare for a week of relaxation. Excitement builds as you board the plane, and you read travel guides for your entire journey as you plan every aspect of your holiday. The plane touches down, and you know you can throw your worries to the wind as you are miles away from home.
Smugly, you think about your fellow travellers who spent money on buying travel insurance, while you, being a positive thinker, decided to rather save that money for buying a few luxuries while on holiday.
You wait to collect your luggage as the conveyer belt revolves, and suitcase after suitcase passes you by. Yours is probably just at the bottom of the pile since you checked in early. But the belt becomes increasingly empty and your bags are nowhere to be seen. After a heated argument with the poor airline receptionist unlucky enough to be behind the desk, you accept that you bags are gone, at least for the time being.
There is certainly nothing uncommon about this, and most of the cheaper holiday insurance deals pay out about £50 for delayed baggage, so you could at least have replaced the essentials.
It’s Just One Missed Connection
You got so worked up trying to track down your bags, that you have now missed your connecting flight. The next flight with available seats only departs in several hours, and you won’t arrive at your destination until morning. What’s more is that this flight is significantly more expensive, so you are going to have to fork out even more money. You could claim up to about £500 pounds for missed flights from the average travel insurance package. You slowly start to wonder why you thought not buying cheap travel insurance was such an ingenious idea.
One Cancelled Reservation Won’t Kill You
Your missed connection means you won’t be arriving at your hotel until the morning, even though you were booked in for the night. Your booking agreement demanded a 24 hour cancellation period (as most do), so you’re liable for the full price, when even a cheap travel insurance policy would have covered you for up to about £700.
You haven’t even arrived at your destination, yet already you have lost your luggage, missed your connection, and had to cancel your hotel reservation. None of these are particularly alarming events, yet when put together, they’ve cost you a significant amount of your spending money. Holiday insurance is suddenly sounding worthwhile. Of course, the fine print of any cheap travel insurance policy might throw a spanner in the works when making claims, but you would be far more likely to get some of your wasted money back than if you hadn’t bought any at all!
Author Resource:-
Patrick Chong is the Managing Director of Journey’s Travel. Their commercial travel insurance website, Insuremore (http://insuremore.co.uk/) offers cheap travel insurance for families, couples and singles with a quick and easy online claims feature.