With over 10 years of experience in the insurance industry, I aim to provide useful information for travelers. However, the content in this post includes specific individual details and is for general informational purposes only. It should not be taken as financial advice. For personalized recommendations or decisions, please consult with a licensed financial or insurance professional.
Travel insurance can be a lifesaver, especially for international trips. In this post, I’ll share my experience with a $145 travel insurance policy that reimbursed my husband and I over $2,600 after a disastrous trip to Spain.
The Trip
The year was 2022. My husband, brother-in-law and I were eager to travel after being stuck at home so long through the covid pandemic and things were finally starting to open again. We were off on a nine day adventure to Madrid, Valencia, and Barcelona Spain….only we would never make it out of Madrid!
I decided to get travel insurance for me and my husband, Brandon. My brother-in-law Anthony decided not to.
Details of our Travel Insurance Policy
It cost us $145.53 for two people in our late 30s. We listed our trip cost as $3,000. This included our plane tickets and AirBNB stay in Valencia (Anthony used his points to book us in Hilton hotels in Madrid and Barcelona).
Insurance policies can offer different coverages and limits to those coverages. Here are some of my travel insurance policy coverages and limits. I’ll get into those details further into this article.
- Trip Cancellation: up to 100% of trip cost insured
- Trip Interruption: 150% of Trip Cost Insured
Trip Interruption and/or Cancellation can be claimed if your trip has to be canceled or is interrupted for specific reasons. On my policy, these reasons included Sickness or Injury of You, a Family Member, or Traveling Companion, Termination or layoff of Employment, Theft of passport or VISA, Strike, Being involved in a traffic accident, etc. These benefit specifics will be laid out in your brochure or certificate of insurance.
- Trip Delay: $2,000 including Accommodations ($150/day) (6 hours or more)
Trip Delay can be claimed if your trip is delayed and specifies how much may be paid per day/total and how long your trip must be delayed. Mine specified I must be delayed 6 hours or more before I could claim reimbursement and each insured person could claim up to $150/day until the total amount ($2,000) was met.
- Baggage Coverage: $2,500
This covers you up to the specified amount if your baggage is lost and not recovered.
- Baggage Delay: $600 (8 hours or more)
This covers you for things like clothes and toiletries to hold you over until your baggage is found. Usually there is a specified amount of hours that must pass before your baggage is considered delayed and a specified maximum that will be paid.
- Medical Coverage: $250,000
A medical coverage claim usually involves a doctor’s note stating that due to your sickness or injury, you shouldn’t participate in your trip. You likely won’t be covered if you buy a box of cold medicine at the pharmacy and claim you stayed in all day!
- Rental Car Damage: $35,000
This covers you if you rent a car. It will specify what things (like theft, collision, vandalism) are covered and what duties are expected of you should you be involved in a covered situation.
- Primary Coverage
Primary coverage (vs secondary) means the policy will pay first. You won’t wait to see if other insurance coverage (let’s say your health insurance policy) pays first and you don’t need to worry about providing proof that other insurers will not cover you before you can receive reimbursement.
The policy covered other categories as well, but these are the areas I was most interested in and also covered sickness due to covid, just in case. It was not an easy process and required organization, lots of receipts, and a little pushback, but we received $2,615.23 in claims reimbursements. This covered most of the cost of our trip and included food, clothes, toiletries, our non-reimbursed Airbnb and a few other things.
When I was originally researching travel insurance, it was hard to make a decision on a policy because most reviewers stated they didn’t have to make a claim. This article is meant to show the whole process, what was covered in a real life situation, and how the claims process worked.
The Trip: What Went Wrong
We booked a flight on American Airlines, in economy, flying from our home city to Charlotte (CLT) then to Madrid (MAD). Maybe this shows how little we knew about International travel, but we only had a 2-hour layover in Charlotte. Guess what…..we missed our connection to Madrid. It was not our fault for the delays. There were mechanical issues that had to be fixed and inspected before we took off. There was a group of about eight people on that original flight to Charlotte that were all getting on the same Madrid flight. Picture this group of eight people RUNNING through the Charlotte airport. Surely they would hold the plane for a GROUP of people who were delayed because of mechanical issues with that same airline. Nope. We ran to chants of “Run Forest Run” and claps of encouragement only to see the plane pulling away and being told we’d need to rebook.
American Airlines put us on a flight to Miami then on Iberia to Madrid. It took us an extra flight and we lost us half a day, but we were just glad we didn’t lose more vacation time. The Iberia flight was awful. We had originally paid for upgraded seats with a little more legroom and we didn’t get those when rebooked on Iberia. Our trip insurance policy paid us back $413.58 for the loss of paid upgraded seats. For someone with restless leg syndrome who can’t sleep sitting up, this was the least comfortable and least amount of legroom I’ve ever had.
Travel Insurance Claim: Trip Delay/Loss of paid upgraded seats; Reimbursed: $413.58
At this point, phew, we were there….in Madrid….at baggage claim………still at baggage claim. They lost ALL of our luggage. All three people. All of it. We had to put in a claim with Iberia (this is separate from the travel insurance claim). That was fun. I’ll skip all the dramatics during the next 5 hours. At that point, we got ONE of our bags. The other two were nowhere to be found and we weren’t about to wait in that airport any longer. In the end, we got all of our bags back right before we flew home (a week later). Luckily, the things we bought to hold us over until we received our luggage were reimbursed by the travel insurance policy. These were things like clothes and toiletries.
Travel Insurance Claim: Baggage delay over 8 hours; Reimbursed $232.08
We took the train to our hotel. We stayed at the Hotel Montera Madrid, which is part of the Hilton Curio collection and boy am I glad we stayed here. We would end up spending the full 9 days in this hotel! Their service was amazing and they were so helpful and accommodating!
Up to this point, the trip wasn’t much fun, but it was only going to get worse! In the middle of the night, Brandon woke up sick and hurting. There was a pharmacy nearby and we were able to get some rapid covid tests. Shockingly, he tested negative. We gave it another day and were still planning on going to Valencia the next day if he was feeling better. The next day he was no better so Valencia was out. I messaged the host of our AirBNB, but she wasn’t very sympathetic and wouldn’t refund us per the cancellation policy (understandable).
Travel Insurance Claim: Trip Interruption/ Airbnb in Valencia; Reimbursed: $366.96
I called the number provided by the travel insurance company. It was the weekend and this number was pretty much a concierge. They couldn’t tell me anything about what was covered, but they did help me get a physician to come to the hotel. The first time a physician visited us, Brandon still tested negative for covid and for strep. We were given some prescriptions and advice. It wasn’t until two days later that he tested VERY positive for covid on a rapid test. We had the physician come out again, partly to see what else we could do to help him and also to get a proof positive test for insurance purposes. We had a discussion with the doctor who advised us to NOT stay in the same room with Brandon. Anthony had an adjoining room so for a night until we could make some switches, I had to awkwardly bunk in a king bed and a pillow wall with my brother-in-law! We also thought ahead to get a note from the doctor saying I shouldn’t be in the same room. This would later be essential in getting reimbursed for an additional room for the rest of our stay.
In total under the medical category, we had two physician appointments at the hotel, doctor-administered covid and strep tests, prescriptions, rapid tests from the pharmacy, cough drops, and cold medicine. We spent $349.07 and were reimbursed $349.07 without much of a problem. We were quickly able to realize we needed to keep receipts for everything.
Travel Insurance claim: Medical; Reimbursed: $349.07
Travel Insurance Claim: Trip Interruption/ Accommodations for the remainder of the stay; two rooms; Reimbursed: $965.67
During the remainder of our stay, we wanted to stay close to Brandon. Anthony and I still tested negative and had no symptoms so we spent a lot of time running over to the pharmacy or the El Corte Ingles Calleo shopping mall which also had a Supermercado. The hotel waived room service fees so we ordered room service multiple days and also tried to find some food nearby a few times.
Travel Insurance Claim: Trip Interruption/ Food; Reimbursed: $287.87
Total amount reimbursed: 2,615.23
The Travel Insurance Claims process
As you can imagine, EVEN IF this claims process would normally be smooth, I had a disaster here. Although there was a place to submit receipts and summaries online, I had WAY too many documents and the website would get hung up and crash.
Once I returned home, I had to speak with customer service several times to determine how best to submit my information and to determine which category each claim would go under. In the end, I sent three separate emails to their claims email box and tried to separate items and receipts into each relevant claims category. I also typed up a summary of our original itinerary, what happened on our trip and what I thought should be reimbursed.
The process was understandably cumbersome, but I only had one item that was denied that I really didn’t agree with. One of the reimbursement checks was coded “R18 Additional accommodations not covered”, so it appeared the extra room was denied. I called customer service, and did not receive the help I needed so I emailed their claims inbox and requested an itemized list of what HAD been approved and denied. Amounts in each claims category were lumped together so it was hard to tell. I also appealed the denial on the grounds that the doctor’s note stated I should not be in the same room as Brandon, so that meant I (a covered person on the policy) had the added expense of a room. A month later, I got that itemized list and an additional $425 for that second room.
Lessons learned
- For travel insurance claims, know that you must pay for the expense up front, keep receipts, and then you will be reimbursed once the claim is processed and approved; this is not instant
- You must be organized and patient. Just like if you were in an auto accident and submit a claim on that policy, you must provide proof. This can be in the form of receipts, doctor’s notes or other relevant documentation
- You may receive a reimbursement check, but it may not be clear what was approved and what was denied. If you think it is incorrect, advocate for yourself. Request an itemized list of what was or was not covered
Is Travel Insurance worth it for International Travel?
Yes. Even though it was a lot of work and some aggravation to go through the claims process, this was a terrible trip. Can you imagine also having to bite that bitter lemon of losing all of the money you spent while not experiencing what you paid for?
A year later, the three of us went to Scotland and all three of us were insured! Luckily nothing happened and no claims were filed, but we felt like we had that safety blanket that if something did happen, we wouldn’t be out our entire trip cost.
Comment below if you had a terrible trip that was or was not covered by travel insurance!
