Your formal attire - and all your other clothes and accessories - will literally miss the boat. You make it to the Port of Miami on time, but the airline misdirected your luggage to Cleveland. If you are hospitalized, your medical emergency insurance would kick in, but if you are not, the trip delay portion of your policy would cover expenses up to the limits of your policy. Travel insurance covers these sorts of trip delays and missed connections.Īn example of trip delay coverage on your return trip would be a positive test for COVID-19 while in a foreign country and CDC guidelines prohibit you from returning to the U.S. Or you're on the first leg of flights to the cruise port, and a mechanical delay means you'll miss your connecting flight - and your ship. You're on the way to the airport when your taxi breaks down, and you end up missing your flight. Insurance will reimburse you for those out-of-pocket costs you can't get back. If you don't have trip insurance and cancel your cruise now, you'll be hit with an excessive cancellation penalty and may even lose out on the value of the trip altogether. You're unexpectedly stricken with appendicitis a week before your cruise embarks. Those with travel insurance could have flown directly from New Orleans to their home airport in most cases. As an example, when Carnival Triumph had mechanical problems that required it to be towed to New Orleans, most passengers were bussed back to the originating port of Galveston. While the cruise line will generally assist passengers in such predicaments, a travel insurance policy will give you ultimate coverage and reimburse you for any unexpected out-of-pocket expenses (such as a hotel stay while you wait for an available flight back home) that the cruise line may not cover.Īdditionally, your insurer's hotline representatives may actually be able to get you home faster than the cruise line's travel department, which is busy trying to assist everyone else onboard, often involving thousands of passengers.Īlso, in some cases, the cruise line may only return you to your original port of departure, which then may necessitate additional transportation from there to your home. Say your ship develops a serious mechanical problem, which necessitates the cancelling of the entire voyage and you're forced to disembark at the next port of call.
It's important to recognize that travel insurance policies can bail us out of a multitude of quagmires. One misconception about travel insurance is that it's only necessary for travelers in ill health, those who pack valuable items in their suitcases or those who plan wildly expensive trips. More importantly, it prevents you from losing money due to unforeseen circumstances and travel emergencies, and insurance fees are typically just a small percentage of your vacation expenditure.Īirline terminal (Photo: Dabarti CGI/) It provides that extra bit of calm and control we all crave. Those reasons and so many others are why cruisers seek insurance coverage - and why we recommend it. Today of course the biggest concern for many travelers is COVID-19 insurance - we have a separate article which cover that. Plus, a host of other general issues can scuttle a vacation, such as the illness or death of a family member, cancellation of plans by a travel companion, job loss, airline delays and lost baggage. We might make a boneheaded move in a port of call and miss the ship. We can get sick before we board or, even worse, mid-cruise. But there are definite reasons why you should consider travel insurance for your cruise.įlight delays caused by weather or a mechanical problem can keep us from arriving to our embarkation port in time.
The last thing most of us think about when we plan a cruise is the list of elements that can go wrong before and during our vacation.
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