Insured best policy when traveling

BEST-LAID PLANS: Yankee Travel consultant Holly Brunelli, left, and company co-owner Candy Adriance. Adraiance purchased insurance for a recent vacation, which came in handy when her husband became ill. / PBN PHOTO/NATALJA KENT
BEST-LAID PLANS: Yankee Travel consultant Holly Brunelli, left, and company co-owner Candy Adriance. Adraiance purchased insurance for a recent vacation, which came in handy when her husband became ill. / PBN PHOTO/NATALJA KENT

(Corrected: Wednesday, April 3, 11:30 a.m.)
In the world of travel, taking one’s own advice is usually not only best but often the key to staying away from trouble.
And though Candy Adriance, co-owner of Yankee Travel in South Kingstown, isn’t happy she was proven right, she’s glad she listened to herself when on a recent vacation, her husband fell ill and the travel insurance she purchased was desperately needed.
“It’s rarely a pleasant reason you [need to use it],” Adriance said. “We went to Jamaica and my husband went into the hospital and was in there for the entire time we were there. Then we came home.”
Her husband, Robert Rohm, incurred some $5,900 in medical bills and the couple ended up spending $50 out of pocket at the end of the ordeal thanks to travel insurance.
It’s not the first time Adriance has had to cash in on a policy – she was on a group vacation in Africa when she, her husband, and friends got into a car accident and had to be flown on a hospital plane from Mali to London. Insurance covered that expense as well.
“The insurance is such a good buy,” she said. “What I always tell my clients is that insurance isn’t something you want to get your money’s worth on.”
According to local travel agents and insurance sellers, though, getting travel insurance is well worth your money.
Despite knowing that disaster, illness or accident can strike without warning, and recent headline news about cruise catastrophes, many travelers ignore agent advice about getting insurance.
The U.S. Travel Insurance Association reported in April 2012 that a survey found one in eight adults, or 12 percent, had their travel impacted or considered changing plans due to natural disasters or world events but that only 29 percent of impacted travelers had travel insurance.
“It’s an expense,” said Ken Minasian, president of Suburban Tours in North Providence, on why travelers would turn down insurance. “It really depends on the value or expense that they’re going through. For a family of three or four, it could be significant. But you know, so is the loss.” Minasian said that on a trip costing $3,000 per person, insurance could run up to $400 per person. If nothing happens where it’s needed, a family of four, for example, then could be out $1,600 they didn’t need to spend.
Nancy Fine, president of Fine Travel in Providence, said most insurance policies run approximately 5 percent of the total trip cost. Of course, there are add-on expenses for things such as a “cancel anytime” benefit. Policy prices are dependent on the traveler’s age.
Rohm’s insurance was $380 for the Jamaica trip.
Jim Grace, owner of Insuremytrip.com, a Warwick-based aggregate seller of travel-insurance policies, said he considers the cost of travel insurance “insanely cheap” compared to what problems would cost travelers.
A recent five-day trip to Spain for him and his wife incurred $53 in travel-insurance charges.
“If I ever had a problem, it would be really, really important. I would never leave without it,” Grace said. “What you have to do is look at each particular person’s needs and concerns and what’s appropriate.”
Grace advises travelers to look at their itinerary, cost and tolerance for risk.
Someone who is going on a European vacation that likely will cost thousands of dollars may be more concerned than someone going to Miami, Fla., for the weekend, for a variety of reasons.
First, the European trip will cost more, so if a traveler has to cancel at the last minute, they’d lose much more than if they canceled the Miami weekend.
Also, insurance is first and foremost about covering medical expenses while away. A family on an African safari would be in much greater need of being evacuated to a hospital than someone who got ill while vacationing in Florida. “In extreme situations and medical emergencies where you have to evacuate the party, there is a section of the insurance that provides a certain level of [coverage] for those needs,” Minasian said. “I don’t go anywhere but across the street without buying travel insurance anymore.”
Travel insurance has come to the front of the news in spurts in recent years with travelers stranded and losing money during the 2010 volcanic eruption of Eyjafjallajokull in Iceland, the Nashville flood in 2010 and social unrest in Egypt.
When the Carnival Triumph in February had an engine-room fire that stranded more than 3,100 passengers at sea in the Gulf of Mexico without working toilets and in short supply of fresh water, there was much attention given to how travel insurance would have benefited the passengers.
Carnival offered each passenger $500, a free flight home, a full refund for the trip and a credit for another cruise when they finally debarked in Galveston, Texas.
Though travel insurance doesn’t cover mental anguish incurred during such a scenario, passengers could have faced medical bills if they became sick from the conditions and insurance included as part of the cruise package may not have covered that.
“I usually buy [independent insurance] not through the cruise line,” Fine said. “Cruise lines are very smart and have [things] written into their policies. They have covered all their bases.”
Grace said corporate travel insurance is a bit different than leisure, which makes up the bulk of his business. Companies aren’t usually concerned, for example, with losing money from sending an employee on an overnight to Washington, D.C. International travel would be different.
“It’s fascinating how it works,” Grace said. “We typically have very happy customers and we’re happy that they found us.” •

(CORRECTION: Mali was originally listed as “Lai”)

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