Unless you happen to earn your living by working in the insurance industry, the chances are you probably don't enjoy talking about the subject much.
You probably also don't like spending a lot of time reading articles on it, particularly when you are trying to get to grips with planning that much-deserved holiday.
Unfortunately though, you just can't afford to neglect holiday insurance. If you do, you may find yourself in the situation of regretting your lack of attention.
Why insurance is needed
It may be very rare but sometimes bad things happen to people when they are on holiday.
It may be bad luck, your carelessness or somebody else's error but a variety of things can happen that could leave you seriously out of pocket in certain situations.
Take, for example, that age-old problem of the loss or theft of your luggage in transit.
It's easy to think that the airline or travel company will pick up the cost of replacing all your clothes and possessions but depending upon the circumstances concerned, you may find that they simply aren't liable. That means you'll be digging deep into your wallet for your plastic to make some emergency replacement purchases and have little or no chance of getting your money back.
Then there is the even more unpleasant thought of what would happen if you were taken ill or injured whilst on holiday. If you are overseas, expect to start incurring some massive medical care bills and in some countries, you may not even get treatment at all until you can prove that you are capable of paying for it.
Even if you are holidaying at home, you may find that if you're taken ill at a holiday resort you'll incur all sorts of additional costs that can be seriously worrying if you don't have insurance to help.
In a nutshell, that's why you need to think about having an appropriate policy. It's unlikely that any existing domestic insurance cover you have will protect you against the above risks and others like them.
To make sure that you won't suffer financial hardship as a result of misfortune on holiday, you will need to have some form of specialist holiday insurance cover.
What type of cover is available?
There are literally hundreds of different policies out there, all providing different types of cover. It will be impossible in a brief article like this to discuss them all.
There may be specific policies for things such as:
• Overseas travel
• Domestic holidays in luxury accommodation
• Sporting and activity holidays (not all standard travel insurance will include cover for participation in sport when you are away on holiday)
• High-risk holiday cover, typically aimed at what might be termed 'dangerous activities' possibly including things such as sky diving, scuba diving, hang-gliding and so on. Some typical activity holiday insurance may exclude these sorts of sports and you may need specific cover to protect your interests.
True, it may take you a little time to look at a range of options and decide what type of cover you need and how much you are willing to pay for it. However, in the hopefully unlikely event that you need to call upon your policy for financial assistance, you'll find your initial up-front research to have been time well spent.
