Trip Insurance – A Very Important Topic
TBSSB is a not-for-profit club and does not provide trip insurance, nor do we promote or endorse any particular insurance company. We do encourage travelers to seriously consider whether or not trip insurance is a good thing for them. But trip insurance is an individual decision and responsibility. If you feel it will give you peace of mind, then the small cost may well be worth it. The entire process is handled by you directly with the Tour Operator or insurance company you select. Again, trip insurance is strictly voluntary, and we offer information only as a convenience for our members/travelers.
You can find a wealth of information on the Internet. Here are some of the many websites where you can easily compare several policies: www.insuremytrip.com, www.QuoteWright.com and www.SquareMouth.com. You can find many others on the Web by doing a search with any Web search engine. These sites allow you to pick and choose what insurance you want and compare different policies of several companies, and their costs, usually side-by-side. Please feel free to consult other companies about travel insurance.
Carefully consider what features to purchase. You may not need some of the features presented, and typically the fewer features the lower the cost.
For instance, you may not want to insure the cost of the airline ticket. Most of the major airlines allow you to use your unused airline ticket, for a fee, for up to 365 days from the date of purchase. Please note that the Club’s Tour Operator purchases the tickets well in advance and that is the date of purchase used by the airline to start the countdown of 365 days.
You should probably not insure your lift ticket cost. If you cancel before a trip departs and do not use your lift ticket at all, you can typically get a full refund through the club for the lift ticket purchased through the club (excluding Epic and Ikon passes). If you use only part of your lift ticket due to an injury or medical event, you can usually get a refund for the unused portion if you provide the lift ticket and a doctor’s note to the Trip Leader detailing why you should not ski due to injury or illness. Please note sometimes there is a nominal administrative fee charged by the destination or by the Tour Operator to process the refund for your lift ticket.
If you paid for your trip using a credit card, you should check with your credit card company about their travel insurance benefits. Some automatically insure travel purchased up to a certain dollar amount for trip cancellation and/or trip interruption, but not medical.
If you want medical insurance, you will also want to insure your trip early, especially if you have a pre-existing condition that may or may not be insurable. Some insurance companies demand that you insure your trip as soon as you sign up for the trip and pay a deposit. Others allow you to sign up very late but exclude pre-existing conditions. If you need trip medical insurance, it’s best to purchase it sooner than later.
Finally, we’d like to suggest that many people have been glad they did buy trip insurance, or unhappy that they did not. Please give trip insurance serious consideration before dismissing the idea. Quite a few of our members have had occasion to use, or wish they had trip insurance. Some have experienced an unexpected illness or injury prior to the trip, or an injury or medical event while on the trip. Others have experienced the death or illness of a close family member before or during the trip. These are just a few examples of unfortunate events that interrupted a traveler’s ability to go on the trip or stay on the trip. Trip insurance can reduce the impact of such events by reducing the financial impact of having to cancel a trip last minute or fly home early.
