When The Summer Travel Season Is Starting
With the commencement of the summer travel season
, a lot of travelers are thinking about protecting themselves, their family, and their vacation investment. If you are in the middle of planning a trip that involves a sizable financial outlay, you should get travel insurance. This can be used to cover missed flights, bungled connections, and illness. This will serve as your safeguard for financial loss if there are any trip cancellations, delays, or interruptions.What most travel policies include are sickness, baggage loss and flight insurance, accident, and financial protection in the event of trip interruption and delay even if these vary. Usually included when it comes to the best policies is medical evacuation which is a feature rarely offered by conventional health insurance plans. In this case, it comes with an expense because one or more airplanes or helicopters are used to retrieve the sick traveler.
It is trip cancellation that is the most likely occurrence because of illness, accident, or weather. Considering how a traveler must cut short a trip to go home, it is possible for trip interruption to be the scenario. In this case, the cost of travel insurance can run to about 5 to 7 percent of the trip cost per person. Should there be a $3,000 per person trip, it can include an additional $150 or $210.
What you should look for is one with a 24 hour hot line providing international access as this is essential for medical emergencies when you are shopping for travel insurance policies. Be sure to check the US State Department's Bureau of Consular Affairs, Superintendent of Documents, US Government Printing Office, Washington, DC before traveling abroad. What you can obtain from them include information on crime, medical care, drug supplies, and on areas prone to natural disasters and political instability.
For those who are robbed while abroad, most US Embassies and Consulates maintain 24 hour operators or answering services to assist Americans in difficulty. You can rely on them to help you with canceling stolen credit cards, dealing with local police, expediting the replacement of a stolen passport, and assisting with language problems. In this case, they can also provide a list of English speaking lawyers, direct travelers to the right source for replacing airline tickets, and instruct travelers on getting money transferred.
What they can provide you for lost passports is temporary identification. Normally, a passport could be replaced within 24 hours but this has since changed due to security reasons. When Americans lose their passports, new passports with computer generated digital photographs will be issued to them.
Separate from the passport, travelers should consider packing a notarized copy of a birth certificate, a copy of the information pages of the passport, and two passport size photos. The process can run faster in this case if the actual passport is stolen. According to the State Department, travelers should also pack photocopies of credit cards, airline tickets, and drivers' licenses and leave a second set of photocopies behind with a friend or family member.
You should consider keeping a copy of the police report so that you can file insurance claims when you get back. Should a traveler be exposed to political instability abroad, he should immediately consult with the nearest US Embassy or Consulate for advice. Including those on street safety, driving, and terrorism, you can get tips and advice on foreign travel from the State Department's publication. Here, you can read about it at the State Department's Web site or order a copy from the State Department.
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