Imagine you’re helping your partner clean up after dinner and a dish needs to go on the top shelf. As you stretch to place it, you feel a familiar twinge in your lower back.

Not again.

4 Tips For Insuring Your Next Big Trip

The twinge turns into radiating pain. Your bad back is debilitating you once more, and only two days before your big trip.

“It’s OK,” you think. “I have trip insurance. I’ll get my money back.”

When you booked your trip on GenericDiscountTrips.com (they have the best commercials), you did the smart thing. You managed the risk and checked the box for trip insurance through their massive corporate partner.

But when you dial their number to file a claim, you find out that your bad back is a preexisting condition, and this particular trip insurance plan doesn’t cover preexisting conditions. Your partner is either going on a solo trip or you’re out the money.

Travel insurance can seem daunting, but it’s important to budget it into your trip, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Whether you’re sending your donor on an epic excursion with one of Philantopia’s risk-free luxury travel packages, or booking a trip for yourself, here are four tips for insuring your next vacation.

You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know

Unless you’re fluent in contract fine print, there’s a good chance you don’t know the gritty details of travel insurance. That’s OK. Here at Philantopia, we work with Trip Insurance Consultants to manage the risk surrounding your awesome risk-free luxury travel package. These fine folks aren’t out to sell one specific brand of travel insurance. They’re brokers who can find you the perfect plan to fit your trip.

Remember the (hopefully) fictional version of you with a bad back from the start of this blog? There’s a plan to cover that. Traveling to an area known for hurricanes? If you purchase your plan before there’s a named storm heading to the location, there’s a plan to cover that, too.

Managing risk is important. Doing so with an expert on your side helps.

Check out all that Trip Insurance Consultants has to offer.

COVID-19 Changed The Game

Over the past two years, what COVID-19 has meant to travel has evolved. From travel bans and lockdowns to cheap tickets and stir-crazy stopovers, the pandemic has impacted all aspects of the industry — including travel insurance.

What started in murky waters has become a clear necessity. Travel insurance covers the obvious aspects of COVID-19: it defers costs if you test positive prior to a big trip, or if there’s a pandemic-related cancellation.

But travel insurance can cover other unforeseen complications on both ends of spectrums. If you’re hospitalized overseas, it can help cover costs. If you test positive with mild or nonexistent symptoms, you’ll still have to enter quarantine. A travel insurance claim will reimburse hotel costs and some other expenses for a specific amount of time.

With the uncertain economy brought on by the pandemic, travel insurance can even help if the company you booked with goes belly up.

Whether you’re headed to Santa Fe or St. Andrew’s, travel insurance is the risk-management tool you need in the age of COVID-19.

When You Buy Matters

It’s such a cliché at this point, but it applies perfectly to travel insurance: the early bird gets the worm. You are the flight-frenzied feathered friend (say that five times fast) and the worm, in this case, is the ability to cover preexisting conditions, financial default, and preserve your ability to cancel for any reason (with proper coverage). Book as early as possible if these factors are important to you.

If you’re booking a trip on your own, it’s ideal to budget travel insurance into the cost of your trip. For some policies, even putting a small amount of money down early lock in better rates coverage down the line.

If you’ve won one of our risk-free luxury travel packages, immediately adding travel insurance through Trip Insurance Consultants will typically result in better rates for the life of the policy.

Don’t fret if you’re staring down a trip on the horizon with no travel insurance policy in sight. There are still options available even if you’re not the first bird to this metaphorical worm — even options for after you’ve departed on your trip.

Flexibility Is Key

Not all insurance packages are one-size-fits-all. The needs of a single traveler in her 20s, a mother in her 40s and a retiree in her 70s are all different. There isn’t one travel insurance package that is perfect for everyone.

Are you traveling domestically or internationally? Is your trip refundable? Do you have any preexisting conditions? What kind of activities are planned for your trip? All these things help determine which plan is correct for you.

Philantopia Has Got Your Back

Check out our risk-free luxury travel packages for your non-profit’s next raffle or live auction event. Your organization will enjoy discounted rates on a variety of luxury vacation packages and if you don’t want to do the heavy lifting on marketing, you can chill. Our team will lift with our legs and not our backs as we heft these beastly marketing materials and pump up your next auction to be super swole, bro. Every dollar you raise above the travel package reserve price goes directly to your organization, so you can focus on the financial fitness of your organization, rather than your bad back.

If you’ve won a trip through Philantopia, make sure to insure your trip with the help of Trip Insurance Consultants.