How Travel Insurance Can Save Your Backpacking Vacation
If one travel concept really gained traction during lockdown, it was the idea of getting away from it all – and by “it all,” we mean everyone and everything, any and every vestige of civilization.
For many travelers, that’s meant backpacking trips, either solo or with a small group of close friends or family.
Backpacking trips can be a little freeform and can lack a lot of prepaid expenses, one of the traditional must-haves for making a trip travel-insurance-worthy. However, it’s smart to insure a backpacking trip, whether it’s into the wild or around a continent – and here’s why:
You need a support system
It’s not often that we lead off a list of reasons why you need travel insurance with something that isn’t travel insurance, but in this case it makes sense.
If you’re out on the road or in the backcountry making it up as you go along, you don’t want your parents walking right next to you reminding you to take your vitamins or wash your hands. However, you do want a resource that you can call on when you lose your passport or you simply lose your way.
Travel assistance from Generali is just the resource you need – and it’s included with every Generali travel protection plan. Our assistance team is staffed with experts who have seen and done just about everything there is to do from a travel standpoint. They’ve dealt with all the embassies and the local authorities, and travel emergencies don’t faze them.
Travel assistance is available 24/7/365, and it’ll never tell you to wear your galoshes because it might rain.
Your luggage is your life
Really, if you’re backpacking, the whole idea is that you’re carrying everything you need in your backpack, so if something happens to that backpack, where are you?
You’re up that TV series with Daniel Levy, that’s where.
Maybe you’re confident that you’ll be able to keep an eye on your backpack around the clock, but we all know that’s not possible.
Baggage Coverage from Generali can reimburse you if your luggage is not only lost, but if it’s damaged or stolen. And the coverage with Generali’s Premium plan goes all the way up to $2,000 per person.
When you’re backpacking, your luggage truly is your life. It needs to be protected.
Medical emergencies can wreck everything
It may have started as a blister, but now it’s an angry, infected boil that needs attention – and you’re not able to walk anywhere unless it’s dealt with.
What might be a minor inconvenience to a less active traveler is a major health issue to a backpacker, which is why it’s so important if you’re traveling on foot to carry travel health insurance with you.
Many overseas medical providers are out-of-network at best – and most demand payment from Americans up front, before any procedures are performed. You may not have ready money to pay for medical expenses, but you need immediate treatment. Travel insurance can help with these situations.
Medical and Dental Coverage from Generali not only reimburses emergency medical expenses up to the plan maximum, but also includes No Out of Pocket Medical service that can pay up front for acute treatments up to $1,000 if you get sick or injured while traveling, plus you get medical service coordination, so you can get the help you need ASAP.
No one wants to get sick when they’re traveling, but it’s worse all around for backpackers. Travel medical insurance can help alleviate the pain.
Evacuation is a budget-buster
If you think getting a blister treated overseas is expensive, wait until you see the price tag for an emergency medical evacuation. Depending on where you are and where you need to go, the price for an emergency medical evacuation can easily run into six figures.
Given backpackers’ proclivity for the backcountry, it’s important for them to choose travel insurance with a suitable emergency-evacuation benefit.
Generali’s Premium plan includes up to $1 million in coverage for Emergency Assistance and Transportation. That should be more than enough to get you out of the kind of situation that normally requires The Rock and $5 million worth of special effects.
Weather is unpredictable
The fact that weather is unpredictable especially weighs on backpackers, because more often than not they’re going to be in it for the entirety of their vacation.
Because of weather, and other natural disasters, and some unnatural disasters as well, backpackers need travel insurance with Trip Cancellation and Trip Interruption Coverage that can reimburse them for certain prepaid expenses if they have to cancel their trip for a covered reason, and can also help get them back on their trip.
Travel insurance is a great idea for all kinds of trips, but if you think that a backpacking trip is too basic to warrant travel insurance, you may want to think again, and get a quote.
Backpacking and travel insurance really do go together. Try it yourself and see what we mean.
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