Today travel has become a way of life, be it for leisure or business purposes. Simultaneously, the risks of travel have also increased. Right from delays to lost baggage to accidents and incidents abroad; you need to be prepared for everything. The best way to protect yourself against all kinds of threats and theft is to buy travel insurance.
While many have realized the benefits of purchasing travel insurance; they are still laidback about purchasing it at the right time. While timing plays a crucial role in almost all types of insurance; it assumes special importance with regards to travel insurance. It is because there are some features and coverages in a travel insurance that is time-sensitive. You can lose key benefits even if you delay the purchase by a day.
Here, we shed light on the importance of timing for buying travel insurance and how it impacts you. Read on!
- Buying Travel Insurance at the eleventh hour
You can buy travel insurance up to a day before your day of departure. Hence, most people adopt a laidback attitude and buy the travel insurance at the last minute. This is a mistake that all must avoid at all costs. If you think that you can buy a Travel Insurance Plan at the airport at the time of departure, you would be denied as you are ready to fly. Even if you buy a day or two priors; it would not only be slightly expensive but you would also lose on a few of its features like coverage for pre-existing diseases and other benefits. Thus, it should be avoided and an early purchase made as far as possible.
- The best time to buy a travel insurance plan
According to most experts, you must buy travel insurance as early as possible. The recommended time to buy the insurance plan is the very time you start investing in your trip like booking flight tickets or hotel rooms, etc. This is because most insurance companies offer you some early purchase features that are highly advantageous to you. Few of those features are:
- Pre-existing medical conditions- It is probably one of the most talked-about features of the travel insurance plan. If you buy a travel insurance plan early, many insurance companies make you eligible for the waiver of pre-existing medical condition exclusion. It is advantageous as you can then easily avail of all medical benefits while on travel with the assurance that your claim would get approved.
- Trip cancellation benefits- It is another important and integral part of travel insurance. There are various reasons due to which your trip can get cancelled. In those scenarios, the insurance company reimburses you the cost of your pre-booked items like flight tickets, hotel accommodation, etc.Most travel insurance provides you coverage for this but it depends on the reason for cancellation. There are several reasons for which you can cancel your trip like a sudden illness, warning of a storm or hurricane in the vacation destination, personal emergency, etc. The early purchase extends the extent of your coverage for this reason. For instance, you could have booked your flight and hotel for a particular destination six months in advance but did not purchase travel insurance. After four months, a warning of an earthquake has been issued for the destination. If you purchase travel insurance now and want to get reimbursed for your booking, you would be denied. But if you had purchased travel insurance while booking your flights and accommodation; you could have got reimbursed in full for the cancellation of the trip. Thus, it makes sense to purchase travel insurance as early as possible.
- Purchasing travel insurance after starting the trip
It may so happen that you could not purchase travel insurance. You might feel its loss during your trip. The situation is unfortunate but not hopeless. You can still purchase the travel insurance online if you have access to the internet. But there are only a few insurance companies that offer such a policy. Moreover, they would have limited coverage.
Final Words
It is now evident that it’s always wise to buy travel insurance as early as possible. The biggest argument in its favor is that you do not gain anything by procrastinating the purchase. Instead, you lose out on a few premium features because of the delay. Thus, buying it should be a top priority before even you begin your booking
