Keep it covered – why your students need trip insurance

Every year, more of our travelers are packing something extra before they head out on their performance tours – trip insurance. As travel planners who have come to expect the unexpected, we can’t recommend trip insurance enough.

The protection and peace of mind that a trip insurance policy provides is invaluable, though we’ve found that many of the group leaders and parents we work with aren’t clear on the benefits or the options available. So let’s demystify trip insurance coverage – how it works, why your students need it and where to get it.

HOW IT WORKS 

Trip insurance is travel specific coverage that’s based on the specifics of your unique trip and varies based on the provider and coverage you choose. Here’s what we recommend for your student travelers: 

• Standard insurance covers only specific reasons for cancelling a trip – most typically those covered reasons are limited to illness or a death in the family. This type of insurance can be purchased up until the time of the final trip payment – usually around 45 days before departure. If a traveler needs to cancel and the reason is covered, this kind of policy will refund 100% of the trip cost

 PLUS

• “Cancel for any reason” coverage is an additional policy that covers all that the name implies. This type of coverage must be purchased within two weeks of the first trip payment and refunds 75% of the trip cost for any cancellation reason. And there are many when it comes to student travelers.

Around 40% of our student travelers have purchased trip insurance before they hit the road. The decision to purchase trip insurance is made by each individual student traveler’s family – though occasionally a school will purchase group coverage. 

WHY YOU NEED IT 

Things happen, especially when trips are planned well in advance. Beyond the obvious reasons trips are cancelled (illness, death in the family, bad weather), there are things specific to student travel that should be considered – mid-year school changes, natural disaster at home (floods, hurricanes, tornados), a parent is transferred, loses a job or is deployed, a sibling is ill or involved in an accident. There are more reasons than we can list here, which make the “cancel for any reason” type of policy even more important. 

WHERE TO PURCHASE IT 

Travel Insured is our prefered vendor for trip insurance, but because policies are purchased individually by student families, our travelers are free to purchase from any provider.  You can click here to learn more about Travel Insured to see if the company is a good fit for your needs. 

If you’d like more information about trip insurance and how to recommend it to your students, we compiled a list of frequently asked questions on a previous blog post. If we can answer any questions about trip insurance or trip planning in general, we’d love to help.