Travel insurance Recommendations for US cruisers

[DimSum]

In the past, we have never had to purchase travel insurance.  But now we are considering get some kind of travel insurance for our first cruise.

What travel insurance have you found to be affordable for cruises?

[klfrodo]

I think the first step is to ask yourself "Why"? Why do you want Travel Insurance? What do you want to insure against? Each and every policy sold has some strong points and some weak points. They also vary from State to State as each State regulates what can and what cannot be sold in their State.

 

If you come back with answers telling us what you want to insure against, we can be more specific in our guidance. For example: I always want to insure against medical losses. So I look for that. I self insure (don't take insurance) for cancellations or delays. I can absorb those losses. ( Or my credit card coverage can assist).

 

I good place to start would be at this website. You can get various quotes and read thru the FAQ's to get a better understanding.   Hope this helps

 

Want to Understand How Trip Cancellation Insurance Works? 888-407-3854 Get the Best Trip Insurance Details, Advice (tripinsurancestore.com)

[DimSum]

Well I guess the main reason to would want to get the travel insurance, is some of the the ports of call are wanting mandatory covid insurance.  Since this is my first time considering to go back to cruising I'm not familiar with such insurance.  I've looked around but not sure if any one particular insurance company is better than another.

 

[mtnlvr53]

59 minutes ago, DimSum said:

Well I guess the main reason to would want to get the travel insurance, is some of the the ports of call are wanting mandatory covid insurance.  Since this is my first time considering to go back to cruising I'm not familiar with such insurance.  I've looked around but not sure if any one particular insurance company is better than another.

 

I'm trying to research this too. I read somewhere on this board that Antarctica was requiring $500000 coverage for medical /repatriation. I don't know if that is for "drive by cruises" or only those that step foot on land. I'm not sure where to look. We had previously purchased coverage for our original cruise (pre-covid) and the carrier had extended the dates, but I am pretty sure the coverage would not have covered a pandemic. 

Any thoughts and advice would be appreciated. Thanks

Janet

Edited June 7, 2021 by mtnlvr53

[Babr]

2 hours ago, mtnlvr53 said:

I'm trying to research this too. I read somewhere on this board that Antarctica was requiring $500000 coverage for medical /repatriation. I don't know if that is for "drive by cruises" or only those that step foot on land. I'm not sure where to look. We had previously purchased coverage for our original cruise (pre-covid) and the carrier had extended the dates, but I am pretty sure the coverage would not have covered a pandemic. 

Any thoughts and advice would be appreciated. Thanks

Janet

I think those high limits for Antartica are for the adventure type cruises. We cruised there several years ago on an ordinary cruise ship, and no extraordinary coverage was required.

 

Unfortunately, that is about all the help I can offer. As you can imagine, the pandemic has changed a lot of things. Many of us are learning anew.

 

Just the same, there are several knowledgable and experienced people who post here. Klfrodo has started the process. Steve Dasseos is a broker who is very helpful. There are others. Give it some time for people to see your question and respond.

[klfrodo]

14 hours ago, mtnlvr53 said:

I'm trying to research this too. I read somewhere on this board that Antarctica was requiring $500000 coverage for medical /repatriation.

Janet

On almost all of my trips out of country, I regularly require that the insurance I purchase have $500K to $1M medical/evacuation coverage. I also ensure that the policy I buy has Medical listed as "Primary"

 

I used the above listed website that I previously highlighted and changed the search to my residence of Illinois. I immediately received 3 quotes that met that criteria.

[mtnlvr53]

Thanks....When I did the same thing max medical that came up was $250K. Cannot see if Covid treatment is covered.

[iamtrustworthy]

On 6/8/2021 at 6:11 PM, mtnlvr53 said:

Thanks....When I did the same thing max medical that came up was $250K. Cannot see if Covid treatment is covered.

Hi mtnlvr53,

 

Thanks for the feedback. I added covid coverage wording to our quotes (I never thought of this before you mentioned it).

 

Steve Dasseos

Edited June 10, 2021 by iamtrustworthy
typo

[Hlitner]

Steve (message for you),

If you can come up with decent insurance for folks from the UK, you might become a legend :).  The poor Brits are having lots of problems finding insurance to countries on their Amber list (which includes a lot of countries).   It is stopping some from booking cruises because they, wisely, cannot take the the chance without medical coverage.   I think one of the reasons Seabourn decided to use Barbados as an embarkation port was that it would hopefully attract more Brits (who are very comfortable flying to Barbados).  But now that Barbados remains on their Amber list that strategy has apparently backfired.

 

Hank

[iamtrustworthy]

17 hours ago, Hlitner said:

Steve (message for you),

If you can come up with decent insurance for folks from the UK, you might become a legend :).  The poor Brits are having lots of problems finding insurance to countries on their Amber list (which includes a lot of countries).   It is stopping some from booking cruises because they, wisely, cannot take the the chance without medical coverage.   I think one of the reasons Seabourn decided to use Barbados as an embarkation port was that it would hopefully attract more Brits (who are very comfortable flying to Barbados).  But now that Barbados remains on their Amber list that strategy has apparently backfired.

 

Hank

HI Hank,

 

I've tried to figure something out for the UK and other countries. For 15 years I had a website called SnowbirdInsurance.com (it now forwards to my main site) that was specifically for Canadian Snowbirds. I had many thousands of Canadian customers, but in 2018, the Canadian provinces stopped US companies from selling to their residents.

 

Over the years companies have offered trip cancellation plans to non-US residents, but every contract I've read has the same loopholes buried in their wording.

 

Steve

[Hlitner]

23 minutes ago, iamtrustworthy said:

HI Hank,

 

I've tried to figure something out for the UK and other countries. For 15 years I had a website called SnowbirdInsurance.com (it now forwards to my main site) that was specifically for Canadian Snowbirds. I had many thousands of Canadian customers, but in 2018, the Canadian provinces stopped US companies from selling to their residents.

 

Over the years companies have offered trip cancellation plans to non-US residents, but every contract I've read has the same loopholes buried in their wording.

 

Steve

A real bummer for residents of some countries.  The people become prisoners in their own country for lack of insurance options.  Argh.  Last December when we decided to spend our usual winter in Puerto Vallarta we were disheartened to find that our usual medical insurance would not cover COVID related illness.   It left us having to scramble and find a policy that would give us the coverage we sought (which included COVID).  One advantage to living in the USA is that we do have lots of insurance competition and we were eventually able to find a policy (at a high price) which we talked about here on CC.   

 

Hank