Trip Insurance: "Travel Protection Plan," or "Trip Cancellation Insurance," or Whatever

I didn't really intend to be posting quite so frequently, but our intent is to share what we learn that might be useful to others. And we are learning a lot.

One decision that you may have to make fairly early on before a trip like this is whether to purchase "trip insurance," or whatever name whoever wants to sell it to you is calling it. I am sure that for a tour operator, like OAT, the more people who purchase this, the better. If for no other reason than it does provide various sorts of protections for travelers who might otherwise be expecting OAT to do for them, or complaining about if OAT doesn't - and, really, it can't afford to. No company could.

And, of course, there are different kinds of insurance: Much of your own insurance might already cover you for some things like health care. We thought it appropriate to purchase insurance that helped us get our money back if the trip was canceled, due to OAT or us or for other reasons. We also wanted to be sure that we were covered on top of our regular medical care for things like getting us home if we were seriously ill and in the hospital.

OAT offers such insurance, and it is quite prominent in your early communications with the company. You can only purchase it from OAT prior to making your 90-days-out final trip payment. On the other hand, Frommers and other guides, tend to say something about that like this: "Always check the fine print before signing on, and don't buy trip-cancellation insurance from the tour operator that may be responsible for the cancellation; buy it only from a reputable travel insurance agency. Don't overbuy. You won't be reimbursed for more than the cost of your trip."

As I noted, OAT has good reasons for wanting you to have insurance. And even better ones for wanting to sell it to you. If you have an insurance agent you trust, we recommend that you look through them. We used AAA, which is where most of our insurance already is. But I am sure other companies have such things and the Frommers link, above, has a list of companies which specialize in related insurance.

We found comparable insurance, even slightly better we think, than that offered by OAT, and for about 40 percent less. It looks to us like preconditions are better covered (although to get that we had to purchase insurance, even from AAA, within 14 days of paying the final trip fees to OAT) and that there are less issues with the reasons why you might need emergency medical travel home. Note that what we purchased includes 24x7 toll-free access to both travel and medical experts.

And we also have about $400 more to spend during the trip itself!