What’s the difference between trip protection and travel insurance?
When travelling one of the most important things you need to consider when planning your trip is travel insurance, yet the amount of travellers that do not protect themselves or their families with travel insurance is shocking. It was reported by the ABTA that 8.6 million holidaymakers didn’t purchase travel insurance before embarking on their summer holiday this year.
A lot of people also purchase travel insurance not aware of what it is and isn’t protecting them against and not realising that travel insurance and trip protection are two different things.
It’s important that you understand the difference between the two so that you can effectively protect yourself against all possible circumstances when travelling. Here’s a quick guide on the difference between the two.
Travel Insurance
Travel Insurance is mostly used to protect you against health-related issues that you may encounter whilst outside of the country. It is intended to mainly cover medical expenses but depending on the insurance package or provider you go with it can also cover trip cancellation, lost luggage, flight accident and other losses that might occur while travelling. There are usually lots of limits and exclusions and although no one likes to it does pay to read the fine print when it comes to purchasing travel insurance so that you know exactly what’s covered and what’s not.
Travel insurance, sometimes known as travel medical insurance, is about protecting people/ it protects travellers and holidaymakers from unforeseen health issues that may arise while you’re abroad. This usually includes sickness, injuries and accidents. Often these plans will cover medical treatment, emergency evacuation, accidental death repatriation and other things related.
If you don’t have travel insurance, you will have to pay out of your own pocket to deal with a problem while you’re away and medical bills can be quite hefty, and this is why travel insurance is so heavily advised. Expatriate Group offer a number of different Travel Insurance options, including Worldwide Single Trip Insurance, Non Resident Travel Insurance, One Way Travel Insurance and Annual Travel Insurance.
Trip Protection
Trip protection or trip insurance is more aimed at protecting travellers from financial loss due to trip related issues. Rather than protecting people, it’s more geared towards protecting purchases. It protects travellers against unexpected situations that might result in financial loss such as trip cancellation, interruption, delay, missed flights and lost baggage.
Often Travel Insurance policies use the two interchangeably and one policy can cover you for both medical insurance and trip protection but it’s worth checking exactly what your travel insurance policy covers as some cheap travel insurance policies don’t cover everything and therefore purchasing extra trip protection can be beneficial.
Here at Expatriate Healthcare our travel insurance covers emergency medical evacuation and emergency and accidental medical treatment. We then have add on options, which allow you to further protect yourself, your trip and your money. We then provide you with a customised quote depending on what you wish to include.
