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Insurance

Travel insurance: worth it?

29 June 2018
Reading time: 4 minutes


Posted by Tom Hartmann , 2 Comments

“You can't really go crazy without it,” says James Boyle, 24, world traveller and clearly a fan of travel insurance. For good reason.

"It was a real lifesaver for me. I would not go travelling for a long time without it."

Over six months, James tramped 3,250 of the 3,500-kilometre Appalachian Trail, which passes through 14 US states.

Then he rolled his ankle. Thinking it broken, he had it x-rayed and saw a doctor for a couple of minutes tops. Yet to simply find out it was a bad sprain suddenly spawned a medical bill of US$4,000.

So it was good news, bad news. The good news: his ankle wasn’t so bad and although he couldn’t finish the trail, he could keep travelling. The bad news: he’d have to cut his trip short if he needed to pay that hospital bill.

And that is precisely when travel insurance proved its worth. He continued on to Central America, and even though he would get a grain of sand in his eye and break a surfboard there, he was covered for those costs too.

All up, insurance paid out more than $7,000 for events during James’s travels.

The art of not getting stuck with the bill

Most insurance is there to protect our money and avoid us getting left holding the bag when something unexpected happens. You don’t want to be hit by a bill you didn’t plan for.

When you’re travelling, there are so many “unpredictables”. All you need is one volcano somewhere to start spewing ash to radically change your flight plans. That, of course, is part of the adventure.

Some risks are worth carrying yourself, and some are better given to a company to pool that risk with many others and take care of it. Yet according to the Insurance Council of New Zealand, one in five don’t take out travel insurance.

And almost half think insurance only starts once they start travelling. But the coverage typically kicks in just after you buy it, so if something changes in the weeks or months before your trip, it’s there to help.

Here’s what travel insurance can do for you

Travel insurance can cover you for:

Here’s more information on travel insurance from the Insurance Council.

But shop around, do your research

James had broken his ankle five years earlier, so he knew he needed to make sure he was covered by insurance before he left for his big tramp. “I was almost certain I would injure my ankle along the way.”

When it looked like an insurance company he had previously used would cover his ankle issues, he wanted to make sure. "I called them up to double-check. After they confirmed they would cover me, I was stoked and just went with them."

Not all insurance is the same, so it has to work for you. If you’re into crazy stuff like wingsuit flying, you may need a specialist insurer.

James recommends reading policies carefully to see what they include and not just “cheaping out” on the most economical option.

He’s keen to go back to the States someday and knock off the last 250km of the Appalachian Trail. "I'll go back and finish it off,” he says. “It's eating away at me.”

Once again, he’ll take travel insurance with him.

rsz james on the trail 2

Comments (2)

Comments

  • Gravatar for David

    30 April 19
    David

    I've travelled extensively over the last 10 years across 4 different continents and I have to say I agree with the article wholeheartedly, it's definitely worth the money. If only for help when you need it most. Think about the thousands of dollars you spend on these trips, the remote locations you could visit and the risk you encounter. $50, $100 or even more is worth it to cover you when your travel health expenses could be hundreds and thousands (Think USA) of dollars otherwise. Trust me, get the (relatively) cheap insurance every time you travel abroad... you'll be glad you did.

  • Gravatar for Alex

    13 February 19
    Alex

    Travel insurance is a waste of your hard earned money. In this article you're only hearing the example of someone who did happen to get value out of it, and of course you would - you're not going to hear a story about someone who went on holiday and spent $50 on travel insurance only to never use it as that's not much of a story. But think of all the wasted insurance that you've taken out in the past and never gotten any value from.
    Forget the BS about "risk spreading" and the hand wringing of the insurance industry about how many people don't have travel insurance. When you get down to it, insurance is a bet. In exchange for the premium you pay, the insurance company is gambling that the insured event won't happen. But the insurance company isn't stupid - they collect vast amounts of information to work out what the risks are before they take that "bet". If they're only charging a small premium it's because they know that the actual chance of the insured event happening is very, very remote (unless you happen to be hiking remote parks for weeks). Ask yourself "Why am I taking this bet against an insurance company, who knows so much more than me, against the chance of something happening which the insurance company must think is extremely unlikely to happen (otherwise it wouldn't offer insurance in the first place)."

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