When is the best time to get travel insurance in relation to your trip?
HUB Insurance Hunter recently picked the brain of TWIL Travel's Ilana Valo about planning winter getaways. Among many other nuggets of wisdom the travel expert offered, she happened to touch on the very topic of this article.
"It's always recommended that insurance is purchased at the same time, or within 24 hours of making your first deposit," she advised.
So why is that? What harm is there in waiting a little longer? Perhaps shopping around to make sure you're getting the optimal deal.
Well, an optimal deal is only optimal if you can actually use it. And sometimes, with travel insurance, you'll need to be using it sooner rather than later.
It's easy to forget that the coverage afforded by travel insurance goes well beyond on-trip scenarios. Travel insurance is equally valuable for the time before the trip than it is for what happens when you're finally out of town.
Just think of all the things that could come up and force someone to cancel a trip: illness (on the part of either the traveler or the people he or she is visiting), event disruption, work obligations, unforeseen financial circumstances, and changed priorities all come to mind. But there are a million other reasons you could pinpoint as well; which is why it's so critical to have that insurance coverage purchased as soon after the initial deposit date as possible.
Bear in mind also that buying an insurance policy doesn't mean you have to have every aspect of the trip booked and figured out. If you still need to get around to booking certain flights or accommodations after you lay down the main deposit, don't worry. Either you can work that out with the company and just add to the premium as you increase coverage, or you can aim high on your estimate to begin with and then get a refund later on when you provide the final documentation of everything.
Regardless of what you decide on, just make sure you do something right away. There's no point leaving yourself exposed to trip cancellation risk for longer than necessary. Book right away. Every time.