People often think that after booking their holiday at a travel agent and packing their bags, their holiday will be great. What if they cause an accident on the road? What if they suffer an accident during their vacation? These are the times people realize how important it is to have a suitable travel insurance. How to choose the right travel insurance? What are the factors a person has to take into account? These are only two of the most important questions a person should consider before going on holiday.

A person can get travel insurance almost anywhere now: at the travel agent, online, or even in stores. These advertised insurance policies are very cheap, but in most cases they do not cover even the basic events. People should be very careful when choosing travel insurance, after all it might depend on the policy if their holiday is a great or a horrible one. First of all, people should consider the ‘must be covered’ things. All these things depend on where they go on holiday, so they should take these factors into account. Let us take an example: in Europe a person can hope for reasonable prices, hygiene and well-trained doctors in hospitals, but these things might not be true if the person decides to visit an African country. And these are only the basics to consider in case of travel insurance. Luckily, for people who do not know what to expect, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office recommends a few things related what travel insurances should cover: medical and health cover, personal liability cover, lost and stolen possessions cover, cancellation or curtailment. These should be the basics travel insurance has to cover, since they help people avoid difficult situations.

The importance of medical and health cover should not even be discussed, it is so obvious. People have medical cover in their home countries; they should have it when they visit foreign countries too. The consumers association suggests some amounts: £ 1 million worth of cover for European trips and £ 2 million worth for the rest of the world. These numbers represent the suggested amounts only for medical and health cover. People should also check their insurance policy for 24 hour emergency service and assistance. The same association suggests a £ 1 million worth of personal liability cover.

When choosing travel insurance people should also consider their possessions, and they should make sure they are covered against lost and stolen possessions. It is worth to consider the following statistics: airlines lost 42 million bags last year and yet more than 14 percent of insurance policies do not cover against delayed, lost luggage. Lost luggage can cause many problems, most of which can be avoided with a good insurance policy. Insurance against lost and stolen possessions will cover not only the luggage lost or delayed by airline travels, but covers against many other possibilities. These three (medical, personal liability and possessions cover) should be on every people’s ‘must be covered’ list.

After making this ‘must be covered’ list, people should make sure that these are included in their current policies, if they have one. People who do not have an insurance policy yet, should make sure that the insurance policy they choose covers against all these three important events. Most of the policies will have either several gaps either extra coverage. A person should also consider these extra things an insurance policy might cover: many of these do not work only for a single trip, they might be annual, family or individual, and the possible extras depend on insurance companies. The number of these extra offers varies highly depending not only on the insurance company, but from insurance level (like basic or premium). After following all these steps a person should know more or less exactly what insurance policy he needs.

The next step is to shop around, look for the best offer. Not only the offers vary highly, the prices do too, so a person who shops around a little could save serious amounts of money. The best way to compare the offers of several insurance companies is to call them and explain your needs, or detail your needs in an email and ask for a price offer. Most of the insurance companies have a website where people can find their offers in detail. This is a perfect way to compare the offers, because people can find not only the offers, but they can read the small prints too. If people know what they need, choosing the perfect travel insurance will not be a problem, but it might worth to change an existing plan to save some more money. These changes should be minor ones, like changing the individual policy to a family one, or a single trip policy to an annual one. These are smaller changes, but if the insurance company has a great offer on them, then why not?

It is easy to summarize the perfect travel insurance: it should give a person peace of mind, which is the most important thing a person needs on its holiday. Another feature of a good insurance policy is that it offers reasonable coverage at a good price. Although the price is important, this should be only the second important thing after the peace of mind. After all, if a policy does not cover the events which happen during a holiday, it is useless, no matter how cheap it was. People who follow the steps detailed above, will most likely find a good insurance policy which offers coverage against all the possible misfortunes which can occur during a holiday.

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