Road Trip Travel Insurance: Why It Makes Sense
Road trips are more popular than ever with everyone from Gen Z’s to Boomers – but have you ever considered buying travel insurance for your road trip?
Here’s why buying road trip travel insurance is a great idea: Travel insurance provides coverage for certain things that can happen when you travel at least 100 miles from your home.
Travel insurance helps protect you if you have to cancel a trip for a covered reason, whether that trip is by car, plane, boat, or hyperloop.
Let’s review some of the things travel insurance can do, and how they might apply to a road trip.
Also read: Why to get travel insurance when you’re staying in the U.S.
How Travel Insurance Works for a Road Trip
Trip Cancellation or Interruption
Trip Cancellation and Trip Interruption coverages reimburse you for the loss of prepaid nonrefundable expenses if you have to cancel a trip, or your trip is cut short for a covered reason – so what are some of the prepaid expenses you might have to be reimbursed for on a road trip?
There can be quite a few, if you think about it.
- How about prepaid, non-refundable hotel reservations?
- Or event/theme park tickets?
- Or let’s suppose you put money down to rent an RV for a week.
When you look at it that way, it’s not hard to come up with road trip scenarios where travel insurance could be really valuable.
Consider this one: You live in South Dakota, and you want to fulfill your lifelong dream of visiting every major-league ballpark. You rent a motor home, you buy the tickets, you pay for hotel reservations … and then a tornado destroys your home.
Generali travel protection helps protect your prepaid trip expenses if your home is made uninhabitable because of a natural disaster, so you can be reimbursed for the tickets and reservation fees, and you can get on with the daunting task of rebuilding with one less thing to worry about.
Rental car travel insurance
Your regular auto insurance might cover damage to a rental car, but consider this: If you get into an accident with your rental car and file a claim with your regular auto plan, you could be paying for that accident for years in the form of higher rates.
Instead of exposing your auto plan to additional risk, get travel protection. Generali’s Premium, Preferred and Standard plans allow you to add $25,000 in Rental Car Damage coverage for an additional fee.
It makes sense to help protect yourself, your rental car – and your auto insurance.
Also read: All About Insurance for Rental Car Damage
Medical emergencies
You don’t think travelers only fall off of foreign cliffs, do you? Or people only get stung by non-domestic bees?
The fact is, people are just more accident-prone when they’re traveling – and regardless of whether people have robust health insurance, there’s no guarantee that all of their costs will be covered if they’re traveling domestically.
Think about deductibles. Or copays. Or out-of-network providers.
Also, there’s no rule that a road trip can only take place within the 50 United States. What about Canada or Mexico?
Travel Medical coverage can make a travel medical emergency easier to bear, regardless of whether you’re cruising the Mediterranean or driving the Alaska Highway.
Also read: Why You Might Need to Buy Medical Coverage Before You Travel
Emergency medical evacuation
One thing that standard medical insurance usually can’t help with is emergency evacuation – being airlifted out of a remote location in the event of a medical emergency.
Suppose your road trip also includes a backpacking adventure in the Bob Marshall Wilderness. You’re two days in and you break an ankle. How are you going to get out of there – and how much will it cost?
Medical emergencies can happen at any time, and if you’re off the beaten path, evacuation can be difficult and extremely expensive. Travel insurance with Emergency Assistance and Transportation coverage can be a big help.
Luggage
Sure – if you’re not flying, it’s a lot harder to lose your luggage. But it’s not impossible. Not for you, overachiever.
Consider the popular destination road trip, where you fly to a departure point and drive from there. Your bags could easily not be down for that kind of travel. Travel insurance can pay for damage to your baggage.
You may never lose your luggage on a trip where all your stuff stays in the back seat, but you certainly could. Travel insurance can help pay for that as well.
Travel assistance
You just never know when you might need help when you’re on a road trip. The travel assistance that comes with Generali travel protection plans is there for you 24/7/365, whether you run out of gas in the Mojave or you have some sort of medical or mechanical emergency and you need to make arrangements to return the vehicle home or to the rental car company.
If you’re still on the fence about travel insurance for a road trip, consider this: Travel protection rates are determined in part by your prepaid trip costs. If your road trip doesn’t have a lot of those, you might be pleasantly surprised at the price you pay to cover your road trip costs.
Also read: 7 Questions to Ask to Find the Best Family Travel Insurance
The open road is full of adventure and risks. Remember that when you plan your trip, and consider Generali travel insurance and assistance services to help protect that adventure.
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