What to insure

[emam]

Apologies if this has already been answered before, but when I tried to search it brought up all of the forums. The top ones seemed to be from other countries.

 

I am looking for insurance for our upcoming cruise. What sort of things do I need to be insured for, it is a fly cruise. i know that most of you on here cruise from Southampton, but there must be some flying ones.I know that people have mentioned medivac before, but they haven't come up on the sites I have looked at, even with a cruise add on. What has come up are extra charges for cruise cover, baggage, flight delay (ash clouds etc), (I wonder if drones will be included in that) and travel disruption (strikes etc). I would have thought that all these things would already been included in the price.

 

So do I need to include all of those above in my insurance.

How do I find out about medivac. Hopefully it's not something that would be needed but who knows.

Is there any other add on's that I would need.

 

Cheers

emam

[CarlaMarie]

Hello Emam,

 

All travel insurance (basic) will cover you for medical emergencies up to a certain value (with an excess). This covers emergency evacuation. 

 

Some insurers cover cruises within this basic price, others do not (always phone and check with your provider).

 

Some will give you the 'Cruise cover add on' at a premium which will also cover you for: missed port, delayed departure, cabin confinement per 24hrs. Others will provide cruise cover in general but without these extras. 

 

'Baggage cover' is normally now also an added extra

 

You need to read all the cover details carefully so you know what the policy does and does not cover.

 

Hope this has helped a little! I know it can be confusing.

 

Carla

 

 

[AnnieC]

The three potentially bankrupting scenarios are helicopter evacuation, medical repatriation, and overseas medical bills. 

 

I use a comparison site (for us the best one is www.payingtoomuch.com but you may find cheaper/better quotes elsewhere), then telephone the best quote (not necessarily the cheapest) and run through it all with a real person,  telling them it's for a cruise, and asking any questions along the way. I always take a note of the time, date, and the name of the person giving me the information.

 

Don't forget to give them any pre-existing medical conditions, however minor.

[john watson]

Travel Insurance comes in two basic types; single trip policy and annual travel insurance policy.  Single trip is cheaper but an annual policy gives you the advantage of all your holidays are covered and not always much more.  This makes weekend cruises cheaper on an overall budget if you want to do those as well.  So that would be your cruise but also  weekends away in the UK in hotels etc.   Cruise lines offer an in house product usually but in my experience this is usually expensive.  Looking around on the internet will bring up a range of providers and you just pick one that suits your requirements.  You need to declare pre-existing medical conditions for each person and make sure it covers the geographical region in which you are travelling plus make sure it includes cruising.

 

Typically you cannot get travel insurance for further ahead than twelve months normally.  If you go down the annual route these are renewable each year.

 

All policies tend to give a list of all the limits for each type of claim and an excess is usually integrated into the standard cover.  Going for a higher premium will reduce or eliminate the excess and vice versa if you want to pay less. The two large things to cover are cancellation and health including medical evacuation.

 

Regards John

Edited January 22, 2019 by john watson

[Selbourne]

Excellent advise so far. I would add a further potential bankruptcy scenario that has happened on a cruise we were on, which is the ship having to be diverted into an unscheduled port for medical evacuation. It happened when we were crossing the Med on Britannia a couple of years back and we had to make a long diversion to Almeria, which isn’t a cruise port, to offload two seriously ill passengers. Aside from the extra miles, it was a very time consuming exercise getting a huge ship like that into a small port and a cargo ship had to be moved to allow us to berth in a commercial dock. Our first thought was that we hoped that both passengers would be OK, closely followed by our hope that they were well insured, as P&O would be issuing them both with eye watering bills for the extra costs incurred. 

 

It horrifies me sometimes how much some people pay for bespoke cruise insurance, especially with pre existing medical conditions. It doesn’t need to be that way. We have an annual multi-trip travel insurance policy with Aviva. It covers four of us (including our adult children, even though they no longer live at home) and they consider cruises to be regular holidays, so cover comes as standard. I went through a list of scenarios with them (including all those mentioned so far) and they confirmed that they are all covered. Calls are recorded, so these things cannot be disputed at a later date.  The only thing that they don’t cover is missed ports. That said, I can live with that when the policy cost less than £100 including cover for my wife’s pre existing medical condition! I do get a bit of a discount as I have other products with them and the price has fallen as we haven’t claimed since we discovered the policy 4 or 5 years ago, but I would suggest that they are worth a try. 

Edited January 23, 2019 by Selbourne

[emam]

Thank you all for all your replies. so it looks like I need to find a quote then phone them up. At least now I have a list of questions to ask them. I did look at the annual one as though we won't be taking two cruises, we might do a few days somewhere in England. Also the amount of cover is a lot more for only a few pounds more. 

 

I hate looking for insurance as I never know if I am taking out the right cover. Your help has made it a bit easier.

 

Thank again

emam

[john watson]

37 minutes ago, emam said:

Thank you all for all your replies. so it looks like I need to find a quote then phone them up. At least now I have a list of questions to ask them. I did look at the annual one as though we won't be taking two cruises, we might do a few days somewhere in England. Also the amount of cover is a lot more for only a few pounds more. 

 

I hate looking for insurance as I never know if I am taking out the right cover. Your help has made it a bit easier.

 

Thank again

emam

 

If you use one of the insurance comparison sites such as the one that has the meerkats or similar.  You can put in all your details and they go into a lot of detail on pre-existing medical conditions etc.  You get an instant response from one or two insurers and their premiums.  In the following few days or more significant other insurers will furnish quotes.  It is sometimes prudent to use a temporary throw away hot mail account as you may get  fifty or more offers with follow ups in the following weeks. This way you give all your details once but get genuine quotes and then ditch your hot mail account.

 

Regards John

Edited January 23, 2019 by john watson

[P-L-B]

We have had worldwide travel cover as part of a package of benefits from our bank for several years now.

It is underwritten by AXA and provides cover up to your 80th birthday.

I have contacted them several times and have been reassured that It covers cruise travel.

Does anyone else use this type of cover and is there any shortcomings that I am unaware of.

 

 

[PrincessPete]

Some very interesting, and helpful to the original poster, replies in this thread. A few comments about annual insurance – obviously I would not wish to enquire about  the pre-existing medical condition that Selbourne referred to in respect of his wife where the premium was still low, but from our point of view annual cover is impossible to obtain.

My wife had Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma (Leukaemia) four years ago, and although she has been clear for over three years now we can not get annual cover at ANY premium.

In fact for the 28 night cruise we are doing in February on Oriana the insurance cost is well over £1000 to include cover for that condition. (I must add our ages are 68/71 and the cruise goes to the Caribbean which, along with the USA and others, is the most expensive area in the world to insure for. All that, with the length of the cruise, obviously increased the premium).

An interesting thread though and just commenting that it is not always possible to get annual cover.

Regarding the cover through Bank Accounts we also have that but they will not include cover for the NHLymphoma so is no use to us for the forthcoming cruise.

Kind regards Peter

[Selbourne]

51 minutes ago, PrincessPete said:

Some very interesting, and helpful to the original poster, replies in this thread. A few comments about annual insurance – obviously I would not wish to enquire about  the pre-existing medical condition that Selbourne referred to in respect of his wife where the premium was still low, but from our point of view annual cover is impossible to obtain.

My wife had Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma (Leukaemia) four years ago, and although she has been clear for over three years now we can not get annual cover at ANY premium.

In fact for the 28 night cruise we are doing in February on Oriana the insurance cost is well over £1000 to include cover for that condition. (I must add our ages are 68/71 and the cruise goes to the Caribbean which, along with the USA and others, is the most expensive area in the world to insure for. All that, with the length of the cruise, obviously increased the premium).

An interesting thread though and just commenting that it is not always possible to get annual cover.

Regarding the cover through Bank Accounts we also have that but they will not include cover for the NHLymphoma so is no use to us for the forthcoming cruise.

Kind regards Peter

 

Peter - My wife has a degenerative condition that, whilst it unfortunately means that she is now a wheelchair user, is unlikely to result in a sudden medical emergency. We are also in our 50’s. I quite understand that with many conditions, such as the one that your wife sadly experienced, it may rule out such policies. Fantastic news that she is now clear though. Unfortunately there is no cure for my wife. We had free bank travel insurance for many years, but when we had to declare my wife’s condition they wanted an extra payment that exceeded the cost of the total policy with Aviva. As you rightly say, age is also a big factor in premiums (as with most types of insurance) so we shall be expecting hikes as we get older. Well worth everyone exploring though, if only to discount it. 

[PrincessPete]

Thanks Selbourne and our best wishes to your wife.

Kind regards Peter and Beverley

[dorsetdumpling]

You will need to take out the insurance before you book or the deposit will not be covered & may also invalidate any claim.

[emam]

As Selbourne said, there are some interesting and good replies.Thanks for all of them.

 

dorsetdumpling, I booked the holiday in between cmas and new year, but at the  time last year's insurance was still active. Then after it ran out the price dropped by quite a bit and the Brexit thread started and I didn't know whether to cancel it. So I left the insurance for a bit so as not to add to the price we would loose. We are going to go ahead with it, so now need to sort insurance. It's not a P&O cruise, but this seems a more active board. I was going to put it on this one and the one for the cruise but never got round to it.

[john watson]

5 hours ago, dorsetdumpling said:

You will need to take out the insurance before you book or the deposit will not be covered & may also invalidate any claim.

 

This is not my understanding.  I do not believe that you must take out insurance before you book (and therefore pay a deposit) to make it valid in relation to a  claim for the deposit.   I think you may book first and then take out your insurance.   The relevant point is that the reason you are making a claim e.g. illness, loss of employment close relative dying must occur after you have purchased insurance.  I do not see that it is necessarily feasible to purchase insurance first on a cruise on a specific sail date then find it is fully booked.

 

Regards John

[PrincessPete]

John, you are absolutely correct. You do not have to take out insurance before you book. As you say, how can you when your chosen holiday might not be available? You can still claim for loss of deposit even if the insurance is taken out some while after the booking was made. Obviously the excess/validity of the claim will be dealt with but, as a basic principle, there is no requirement to take out the insurance before you book.

In fact that happened to us several times when we had to cancel a few holidays after my wife's illness was diagnosed (see earlier posting) and all deposits were refunded, excess apart, despite taking the insurance out after the bookings.

Kind regards Peter

[john watson]

If you examine a theoretical example of someone booking a £4000 cruise with a £400 deposit 300 days in advance of sail date.  On day 1 your £400 is at risk but the rest of the money is not because if you cancel you simply lose your deposit with an early cancellation.  However later on your risk increases enormously, to the full £4000.  If final payment is due on day 240 should you become ill or whatever after this day forcing cancellation,  you will have to pay up the remaining £3600.

 

It makes a lost of sense to get your insurance as soon as possible after you have paid the deposit to lay off all the risk to the insurers for as long as possible and make sure it is correct for your needs.  Health insurance is not just for once you are onboard.

 

Regards John

Edited January 25, 2019 by john watson

[ollienbertsmum]

Once I have started to think about flights and no-refundable excursions I get my insurance in place in the event of any cancellation.    I make sure that I don't travel with valuables so I don't need to pay big premiums there.  I think that insurance for missed ports or even confinement to cabin in the event of illness is a waste of money - there is no loss of money involved so how could money make up for it. 

 

In reality the only reason that I insure is medical.  I would hate to have to empty my bank account for an appendicitis in Puerto Rico (I used that example because it happened to someone I know.  They were insured).