So someone has reached out and asked: "Is it too late to buy travel insurance?"
As you know from reading your Tour Reservation Form, we always recommend that guests purchase Travel Insurance. We remind guests that the best time to purchase simple low cost Travel Insurance to protect your investment in your vacation is when you first sign up for a trip and make your very first payment! Then you'll be protected from the very first day. To get the most benefits (such as coverage for a pre-existing condition or to buy Cancel For Any Reason coverage CFAR) from a Travel Insurance policy, it's very important to purchase the policy immediately (10 -21 days) after you make the first payment for your trip. But for standard travel insurance, it's almost never too late to buy... . A lot of folks think; Well, it's still over 7 months out till I leave, so I've got lots of time to consider this... But what you need to understand, is that one of the main benefits of travel insurance is that, once you buy it, it covers you for the the many months/years leading up to your travel... and every day you're not insured, you have no protection, and so if something happens to prevent you from going, you could loose your whole investment.
Other folks think: "Why do I need travel Insurance, I'm not going to cancel." No one ever plans to cancel their trip... As you might imagine, in our 24 years of running multiple trips per year for hundreds and hundreds of guests, we've seen folks cancel for a variety of reasons - from broken legs to broken marriages. We even had a gal from California get turned away at the Rome airport as her passport wasn't in order. They wouldn't let her into the country.
But travel insurance isn't just about trip cancellation... Most comprehensive Travel Insurance policies cover a variety of health, medical, dental, trip interruption, baggage loss, baggage delay, and even trip cancellation issues for covered reasons (ie: job loss, sickness, accidental injury, death in the family, etc). Most domestic health/medical insurance including Medicare provides no or very limited coverage when out of the country...
Many Tour Operators make Travel Insurance mandatory, and every Travel Agent recommends it... But while we don't sell or make Travel Insurance mandatory, we remind guests that with our very unique Boutique business model, leasing an entire Villa and contracting with so many different vendors for group priced services and provisions (cleaning staff, sanitation providers, commercial laundry suppliers, bathroom amenities, household provisions suppliers, full time chefs, food & wine providers, bands, tour guides, VIP winery luncheons & tours, admissions providers, foreign licensing fees, group insurance, tourist taxes, electricity etc, yes we even pay for electricity), your deposits & all payments are non-refundable... So if YOU would need to cancel YOUR trip for some reason, your Travel Insurance provider could provide your refund to help soften the financial blow. Unfortunately, these things happen more often then you can imagine... As a practical application, when guests contact us to tell us they need to cancel, we refer them to their Travel Insurance provider. (it's best if you read that last sentence again).
