With a large investment in a tour or cruise, it naturally makes sense to purchase travel insurance. Among the things such policies normally cover is medical evacuation. This means that if you are injured or become ill on your trip the insurance company will pay to have you flown home. But a recent case made headlines when a passenger on upscale cruise line Azamara received what we would have to call sub-standard treatment. For the full story we suggest you click this link.
The main thing we want you to take away from this story is the importance of from whom you purchase travel insurance. Buying it directly from a cruise line or tour operator is not recommended for several reasons.
As pointed out in the Frommer’s article, the cruise lines do not necessarily include everything that you might want, or possibly, need. And if you buy directly from a tour operator and they were to go out of business (a rare ocurrence, but it has happened before) then you would have no guarantee of getting a refund for the tour or even for the insurance premium.
But we want to point out a difference: many travel agents who sell cruises or tours will sell you insurance that is purchased directly from the insurance company, and that is what we recommend. Buy your cruise or tour through them, buy your insurance through them if you wish, but just be sure you are actually buying the insurance from the insurance company and not the tour operator or cruise line.
And one final note: horror stories like this make the news, but are few in number compared to the thousands of claims that are handled well. For more about travel insurance click this page on our main website.
