We often have clients ask whether travel insurance is really necessary. Our answer is always and unequivocally yes! To underscore our point, we thought it would be insightful to offer some real stories from our own travels and our clients where the return on investment for travel insurance paid off handsomely.
- 2006 Mediterranean Cruise. We led a small group of 10 people aboard a Princess Cruise sailing Venice to Rome in late October/early November. We were all booked to travel aboard Alatalia (our mistake -- don't recommend flying Alitalia). Altalia changed our flights repeatedly. Long story short, rather than our original direct flight to Milan with a short connection to Venice, we were routed instead and at the last minute through Paris on United, with a connection to Air France to Venice. The connection time: only 45 minutes. Needless to say, we missed our connection and Air France had no available flights to Venice the rest of the day. We ended up flying to Bologna, Italy, about 2 hours drive from Venice. In Paris, we quickly had to arrange a private large van to transport us from Bologna to Venice in order to make our cruise. When our flight arrived in Bologna, our luggage did not. Travel insurance paid for our transfer from Bologna to Venice (flight delay and interruption coverage) and provided us a daily allowance for our delayed luggage.
- South America 2007. Our clients had booked a cruise aboard Holland America Line with another couple. Both couples purchased travel insurance. Sadly, 8 days before the trip sailed, the wife of the other couple passed away. The three remaining travelers/clients were able to cancel their cruise and receive full reimbursement for the expensive cost of their cruise. In 2008, another woman who had not booked her cruise through us but had booked through another agency on Holland America Line also sadly lost her husband days before the cruise, but had not purchased travel insurance. She lost the entire cost of her cruise, but is now a client of ours and purchases insurance on every trip.
- Mediterranean 2008: Our clients booked airfare through an online provider. The airline, Austrian Air, required paper tickets. Our clients did not have them when they arrived at the airport on a Saturday evening, and Austrian Air remarkably refused them boarding and offered no alternative solution. They watched the plane depart from the gate. Travel Guard insurance has a dedicated flight assistance department. Travel Guard stepped in, immediately went to work, and rerouted our clients to get them to Europe and their cruise, one of the many supplemental benefits to buying travel insurance through a company like Travel Guard.
- Caribbean 2007. A client booked on a Caribbean cruise. She purchased travel insurance. After final payment but before departure, she broke her arm and was unable to travel. The insurance reimbursed her the full cost of her trip.
- Baltics 2008. We led a group of about 30 aboard Oceania Cruises on a 14-night Baltic cruise that included three full days in St. Petersburg. On the first day in St. Petersburg, as we were walking along the pier aside the ship to make our way through Russian immigration, a client made a mistake and one of her legs fell through a gap in the pier scraping her skin from her shin and causing significant bleeding. The cruise line's medical personnel escorted her from the line to the onboard medical facilities, baddage her wound, and she was good to go for that day. On day three of our visit in St. Petersburg, the same client fell from a stool the tour guide used to assist people's entry onto our van. This time, she scraped her skin off to the bone, and needed emergency medical treatment to suture her wounds. The ship's doctor stictched her wound and provided her medication for the injury. Travel insurance picked up the entire cost of the medical treatments.
- Baltics 2008. On the same Baltics cruise, another client lost her wallet with credit cards. She immediatly called Travel Guard, who handled cancelling her credit cards and provided spending cash to assist the client on the remainder of her voyage. Travel Guard, like many independent travel insurance companies, offers remarkable assistance that goes beyond just the basic coverages.
- Mediterranean 2009: We led a group of 84 on a remarkable cruise of the Mediterranean aboard Oceania Cruises. Much of our group was booked on British Airways, routing through London Heathrow. On the return flight, nearly all of our luggage got left at Heathrow because of a baggage system failure (10,000 bags were left in Heathrow that same day). Because of the enormity of the problem with British Airways, our bags were significantly delayed in being returned to us. Travel Guard insurance offers a baggage tracking service that takes the burden of regularly calling the airline off the traveler. Travel Guard took responsibility for tracking my luggage, and sent me an e-mail every day on their efforts and provided a status update. I received my luggage 5 days later.
Cruise Holidays of Alexandria strongly recommends travel insurance, and offers our clients insurance through Travel Guard, who we firmly believe is the best in the industry.
