Save Money On Travel Insurance

BetterAskAdam.com
11 minutes ago
5 min read

Save Money On Your Travel Insurance and Make Sure You Have It

Buy Bye

It's an important headline. Buy that travel insurance when you book your travel but NOT necessarily from the same people you get your holiday from, as that can be an expensive option.

That's because travel insurance protects you from problems that arise before you leave.

Examples of things that travel insurance can cover you for, include:

Cancellations: travel insurance can cover cancellations due to illness, injury, or family emergencies. According to Multitrip.com, 21% of travel insurance claims are for holiday cancellations, meaning something went wrong before the trip even started.
Family problems: Multitrip.com found that 32% of cancellation claims were due to a travelling companion’s illness or injury,

Despite the huge advantaege of buying travel insurance you book, more than half of British holidaymakers only buy insurance one week before they leave, with one in 10 buying on the day of departure, according to research from GoCompare.com.

More than a quarter of holidaymakers (27%) wait until the day they're going away to buy travel insurance, according to research by Go Compare. A further 26% buy it the week they go on holiday, meaning many travellers are leaving it late to secure cover

Although I'd generally buy travel insurance when I book my travel or have multiptrip insurance for the whole year, travel insurance prices don’t typically cost more the closer you get to the date of departure. So unlike plane tickets - there is generally no dynamic pricing - which is great of course.

Forgotten to buy travel insurance before departure?

Some insurers offer post-departure travel insurance, known as ‘already travelling’ insurance. This can be useful if you have forgotten to buy a policy before you left. Put 'Already travelling travel insurance' into your search engine of choice and see what it offers.

What happens if my travel company goes bust?

ATOL (Air Travel Organiser’s Licence) protection means you’ll be covered if your holiday company goes bust. It’s a financial protection scheme for package holidays that include a flight, and that you book with a UK firm. It's run by the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and designed to make sure you can get a refund or continue your holiday if your travel company goes out of business. When you buy an ATOL protected trip, you’ll receive an ATOL certificate. This tells you how the cover works and what you should do if your travel company stops trading. You can see more details on a useful guide from GoCompare here

If your airline goes bust the same kind of ATOL protection might apply and there is a really good guide from SkyScanner here

Skyscanner warns that "Unfortunately, airline financial failure or insolvency is rarely included on most travel insurance policies. However, there is no single rule for this and you should consult your own travel insurance provider to check their approach to airline failure (it may be under ‘supplier failure’)."

Save Money When Travelling

Free but limited health insurance

EHIC and GHIC

Neither an EHIC nor a GHIC gives equivalent protection to travel insurance, which remains essential. A GHIC is a free medical card that gives you access to 'necessary healthcare' in EU countries at the same price as citizens of that country. So if they get free treatment, you get free treatment.or the same cost as.a local resident.

It is free to apply and suprisingly easy so I'd strongly advice not going to any sites that charge a fee to do it.

Use the NHS website to apply for a Ghic

Delayed flights

If your flight is delayed or cancelled you may be due compensation. If you have experienced flight delays of three hours or more, you could claim compensation of up to £460 per traveller, depending on the flight’s distance and length of delay.

Yet seven out of 10 Britons have failed to claim and one in three does not even know they can get financial redress, according to new research from comparison site Money.co.uk.

The rules apply to all delayed flights leaving the EU, regardless of airline and destination, as well as EU carriers landing in the EU.

You are only eligible for compensation if the cause of the delay was “within your airline’s control” which excludes bad weather, strikes or unforeseeable technical issues.

Insurance for those over 65 year

Fair or not, as just because you are over 65 doesn't mean you are less healthy than a beer dribnking smnoking 50 year old, many insurance policies can penalise you. However, Which? did some very useful research that "quizzed 55 travel insurance firms in 2025, the following told us they had annual policies that don't have maximum ages for new customers: All Clear, Avanti, Co-op Insurance, InsureandGo, Just Travel Cover: Good2Go Extra, Nationwide Building Society, Saga and Staysure"

Pre-Existing Conditions

CompareTheMarket have a useful guide to this which include this advice:

"Taking out travel insurance with a medical condition is a bit different from usual. You’ll normally be asked a series of questions about your health and medical history.

Depending on your circumstances, you may also be asked to complete a medical exam. This will allow insurance providers to tailor the policy to your needs.

It’s important to be as honest and accurate as possible. If you don’t disclose a condition or aren’t honest about its severity, your claim may be rejected and your policy voided. This means you’ll have to pay for any medical treatment yourself, which can run into tens of thousands of pounds when abroad.

The results of your questionnaire or medical exam will determine which policies you might be eligible for. However, some providers may offer you cover that excludes your listed medical conditions or charge you a higher premium to include them in your policy.

Just bear in mind that the best specialist travel insurance for medical conditions isn't necessarily the one with the highest premium."

Multi Trip Insurance

Unlike single trip travel insurance, which protects you for just one specified trip away, annual travel insurance can cover you for multiple holidays over a year.

If you go away two or more times a year, annual multi-trip policies usually work out best value as it covers all a year's trips up to a set length per trip (which can range from 17 to 30 days per trip).So once you have gone abroad 2 or 3 times, the insurance tou get for the extra trips is effdectively free.

The same applies to car hire excess insurance - which can really help as the individual car insurance can be close to the cost of the car hrie itself. Be aware however that if yuo usse the multi car insurance route, you generally have to leave a deposit, woukld have to pay for any damage and then reclkaim it ony uor policy and have the real hassle of having to check the car in and out of hire for famage - which is a real pain. But it might save you a lot of money