One of the first things you need to decide before taking out any kind of travel insurance is whether or not want to insure yourself for a one off trip or whether it would be more cost effective to take out a longer term travel insurance policy. Some companies will offer you annual cover for not much more cost than if you buy travel insurance for a one off holiday.

In addition, make sure you don’t have travel insurance with your credit card. Although this kind of travel insurance cover might be rather basic you might decide that it is sufficient for your needs.

When you are buying travel insurance you are looking for three different types of cover:

1)      Emergency medical treatment

2)      Cancellation / interruption cover

3)      Personal belongings

The far most important of the three and the one that would cost you the most if you decided to take a chance and travel without insurance is emergency medical treatment. If you are even half considering travelling without insurance just take a minute to check out the cost of medical care in the country you are travelling to and if you then add to it the cost of the flight home, once you are fit to travel, the whole episode could set you back thousands (even run into tens of thousands) for the sake of an incomparably small insurance premium.  One word of warning, you might find that pre-existing conditions aren’t covered by your travel insurance.

Travel insurance cont....