Getting Travel Insurance In A Pandemic

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Meggan: Welcome back. Everybody it's just Travel tip Tuesday is the quick episode where we give you our faithful listeners, a quick tip to take forth with you as you plan your next travel adventures.

I mean, who wouldn't want that?

Jenn: Who wouldn't?

Meggan: So this week I want to talk to you about travel insurance and yes, of course you should get it. And yes, it might. Oh, insurance is boring. Sure. I mean, I get it. No one wants to talk about the nitty gritty details. We all just want to travel. Understandably. Now I've always have to, I have to say mostly through work.

I've always had travel insurance when I've traveled. And that was sufficient and I've been lucky. You know, nothing's ever been canceled on me in terms of like never getting money back or that kind of thing, unless I never get to Germany and then we'll see,

but I have had use travel medical insurance in Iceland. I would have paid whatever they wanted from me. I didn't care. But it was nice when I got home that I was able to get money back. So it actually has come in handy for me. And in these days, of course, of the *pandemic* which was hopefully waning.

But into the foreseeable future, you may likely need to consider. Um, Insurance outside of the typical, which I mean COVID insurance. And I know several instances of people just lately. Friends of friends, friends, kids getting trapped in foreign countries. I shouldn't say trapped, but I guess when you quarantine, it is a trap

Jenn: You're kind of trapped. So they're not going to let you on a plane. So you're kind of trapped.

Meggan: I think it's called quarantine visit is a trap. So of course, tested positive didn't know they were trying to come home, had to stay behind a quarantine in a hotel until they tested negative pay for food flights and the hotel. Plus there's been several high profile stories in the news of Canadians traveling, same thing happening to Thailand, et cetera.

So outside travel insurance standardly of what you would buy. You need to be up-to-date on like what's going on in the world. So make sure again, we talk about it all the time. You do your research and you insure accordingly. Cause really for me, my only anxiety at this point about traveling is the fear of getting COVID while on a trip and then not being able to get back home because of it.

If it happens, it happens, but I am, I don't want to miss work and B the cost, but this insurance is going to help ease my anxiety. I'm sure of it. I still don't want to do it. But I, I think right now it's the, it's the cost of traveling literally is to plan for something like this. And Jen, I know you're busy in the midst of planning, a trip to Scotland.

What have you guys sort of thought about this insurance piece?

Jenn: So we always. Almost always have bought travel insurance like extra insurance outside of the medical insurance that we already have through my husband's work. So I usually buy through world nomads or I have most of the time bought in through, through world nomads in the past.

But they're not covering anything to do with COVID right now. It's like front page of their website. COVID no. So I went looking for other options. I asked a lot of people on Instagram and they suggested Manulife cover me. So that's what I, that's what I have gone through. That is specific to Canadians.

If you're listening, I don't know what your options are if you're american. I hadn't looked, but it will cover medical trip, cancellation and interruption. And then the usual like baggage loss type situation. It'll cover $200 per person per day for like hotel and meals. If you have to like quarantine, if you're stuck up to a maximum of $2,800.

Yeah. It's really important to, I know the sucks, like it's really important to read the fine print, right? When we were booked to go on our mediterranean cruise. We obviously we booked prior to pandemic starting, and then it was like February end of February, 2020. And the pandemic was kind of starting Canada.

Wasn't that bad yet, but Italy got hit early and we were supposed to go to Italy. And of course they issued like this don't travel to Italy thing. So we canceled our trip thinking we could get our money back through our travel insurance, but because we got a cruise credit, we couldn't get our money back because we had already been compensated.

Right. So, and our, we had a terrible travel agent at that point and I feel bad because. I feel bad saying that because we hadn't lived through a pandemic before, but she was like insuring me that we would get our money back and mean. W they're telling us no. Right. But we did get money back from the flight.

So air Canada had refunded us most of our flight except for like $400 or something. And, and the travel insurance we did have did refund us that extra. But yeah, it's, it was kind of a huge like cluster, right? Like it was a mess. And so now I'm a lot more careful going forward about what does the travel insurance cover? What doesn't it cover?

Meggan: Right, right, right. Well, that's really great too, because like I'd said, like we haven't got to that point yet thinking like the COVID coverage piece, because terms of trip cancellation, like I said, this was a three-year-old credit, so I'm not worried about that at this point, I've given up that worry. And then all of them accommodations and car, like, we can lots of time to cancel that, so we won't be charged, but it is the COVID coverage that I'm interested in. So that's really great information. Especially in terms of, I really do think people are starting to get back out there. I don't know. No, they say it's peaking and we're going in the right direction.

Yada, yada, yada, who knows, but people are traveling. So I think it is a really timely and it's important piece. And no, no one wants to think about it or talk about it. It's like checking the date on your passport. Like our last travel tip Tuesday. They're like, that's some boring. These are important things that really now more than ever have to be paid attention to.

And while it's unfortunate getting trapped somewhere without coverage would be way more unfortunate.

Jenn: Yes. Yeah. I think at this point it's getting back out there as safely as you can be and as, you know, cover your butt as much as you can. Right. And yeah, that's kind of, that's kind of where we're at right now is like, We're vaccinated for boosted. We've got travel insurance. We're going to go.

Meggan: That's exactly, exactly the way that we feel. I couldn't be any more ready. Well, that's it for this week, everyone happy travel planning and be smart. Get the insurance and we'll talk to you later. Bye.