Travel insurance is always a prudent move.
As I traveled through Europe and Africa last year, most everyone I talked to from those areas had an annual travel insurance policy. Since their health insurance would not travel with them, it was imperative to have a backup for emergency coverage.
While everyone in this country knows that insurance is a good idea when traveling, after you’ve bought a high-priced single trip package, you began to wonder if that was all worth it. If you traveled regularly for business and you weren’t on a expense account, chances are you dropped the idea of being protected. Well, I spoke with Daniel Durazo, Director of Communications for Mondial Assurance and discovered that there is such a thing as reasonably-priced, year-long policies available in the US that would be a great gift for that business traveler on your list.
Mondial is a unit of Allianz (with more than 100,000 employee’s world-wide), so you are dealing with a known entity. They sell under the brand name “Access America” and are the ones backing policies sold by American, Delta, United as well as Orbitz, Disney and HomeAway. Their specialty is on-line sales , direct to the business traveler with four levels of coverage from $100-400 annual fee.
Mondial’s business policies are geared toward emergency medical situations, medical evacuation, baggage loss, as well as business equipment loss or rental. An important piece of the policy is travelers assistance, which provides 24-hour medical or location phone assistance, even down to having one of their emergency medical doctors manage your case if you are in a remote location and need a multilingual doctor to consult on your behalf. They also have ratings on every hospital around the world so that they can advise where best to go if you need help.
These lower priced policies do not cover trip cancellation (which typically cost 5-7% of the total trip price) but they do cover much of what you as an individual would have to pay for the more common travel hazards. Check them out on the Access America Website.
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