Travel insurance is as essential as your passport, regardless of your travel destination. If you can’t afford travel insurance, you can’t afford to travel! Travel insurance can cover the policyholder for insurable events that may occur before or during travel, such as trip cancellation or interruption, medical expenses for injury or illness, theft of valuables, baggage delay or damage and more.

The cost of travel insurance is based on a number of factors such as the type of cover requested, the age of the insured, the destination of travel, length of stay and any pre-existing medical conditions. A wide range of travel insurance policies are available so shop around in order to find the policy that best suits your circumstances and travel plans.

Everyone needs a holiday from time to time, and for many that golden opportunity comes along in summer – two weeks in the sun with family and friends usually sees us right for another year, and we come back refreshed and revitalized for work. These days, we step onto the holiday flight without even thinking; flying has become such a commonplace occurrence.

Once you take off, you can relax knowing that only in a few hours’ time you could be sitting on a Spanish beach enjoying the sunshine and perhaps a cold beer or two. However, have you considered what may happen if you were uninsured? The reality is that so many people, having made all their preparations for a holiday in the sun, just take the risk that travel insurance won’t be required. Many people see it as an unnecessary expense, especially in this time of global economic hardship.

While this may certainly be the case for a cost conscious traveler, the implications of not having a good quality travel insurance policy in place can be devastating. For example, if your belongings get stolen, you fall sick and consequentially miss the return flight, you could find yourself significantly out of pocket. Massive and unplanned medical expenses are the biggest area of risk you could come across.

The figures can be eye-watering. A broken leg proves to be unfeasible for most people. A good quality travel insurance policy is designed to mitigate this risk because in the terms of the policy you will find that such events are fully covered.

Spending what works out at a tiny percentage of what you have paid for your holiday is a very worthwhile investment – the value of travel insurance is not to be underestimated and right now, competition in the travel insurance market has never been higher, so you will be assured of a great deal.