How Travel Insurance Can Help with Trip Cancellation

Trip Cancellation insurance is designed to make you "whole" again, reimbursing you for unused, non-refundable, pre-paid trip costs if you’re prevented from taking your trip due to a covered reason. 

If you’re forced to cancel your trip, how much of that pre-paid trip cost could you get back? There are often cancellation penalties tied to travel purchases and you could get a portion of your trip costs back or none at all. Those penalties tend to get more severe as the departure date gets closer. This is where travel cancellation insurance can help you. 

Many things can happen between the time you book your trip and the start of your vacation that could affect you, your traveling companions or family members and force you to cancel your trip—sickness, job loss, and even flight cancellations due to adverse weather or an airline strike. Luckily, travel insurance is a small investment against the full cost of a trip and usually includes Trip Cancellation coverage that can provide reimbursement for a canceled trip.

Learn more about travel insurance:
• What is Travel Insurance?
• How Much Does Travel Insurance Cost?
• Top 5 Reasons to Get Travel Insurance
• Guide to Understand, Purchase and Use Trip Insurance

Trip Cancellation is the only travel insurance coverage that can be used before a trip begins. Travel insurance can help protect you from certain unexpected events that are out of your control, but only specific events are covered.

Consider these scenarios that might cause you to cancel your trip and could be covered by trip cancellation insurance:

Sickness, Injury and Death: You or a traveling companion become sick or injured and can’t travel. Or a non-traveling family member is hospitalized or passes away and you are unable to make the trip.

Adverse Weather: You experience flight cancellations due to adverse weather such as a hurricane or snowstorm.

Job Loss: After at least one year of employment you are laid off and can't go on your trip.

Extension of School Year: Your son or daughter attending school must complete a new operating session that was extended beyond the pre-defined school year.

Military Duty: Due to a natural disaster, a traveling companion has been called into active military service to provide relief efforts and must cancel his or her trip.

Home Uninhabitable: A flood, fire or other natural disaster renders your home residence uninhabitable.

These are some of the common situations where you could be reimbursed for trip costs if you have trip cancellation insurance, but not a complete list of possible covered situations. See our full list of covered reasons for trip cancellation