Ebola – What Does It Mean for Your Family Travel Insurance?

Single, group and family travel insurance policies are a must if you plan to travel. They are especially useful if external events force you to cancel your trip or if you find yourself requiring medical attention while abroad.

Ebola, however, presents a whole new ballgame – especially since it has become widespread enough to warrant government intervention. It’s no surprise that providers are reacting in different ways. The question, however, is just how much of an effect Ebola will have on your basic family travel insurance policy. Here are some of the more notable aspects to keep in mind.

Disinclination is Not a Plausible Reason

Some family travel insurance providers offer packages that reimburse you if you decide to cancel your trip for any reason at all. Others will only reimburse your travel fees if there is a plausible reason for you to cancel your trip. Fear of contracting Ebola is not a plausible reason, especially if you are travelling in destinations where the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) has not released any travel advisories for your planned destinations. If your destinations have, however, been marked by the FCO as unsafe after you’ve made arrangements while it was still safe, then your provider will be expected to cover your cancellation expenses. This also applies if your airline decides to cancel services to your planned destination due to Ebola or some other outbreak.

Contracting Ebola Inside and Outside Countries with Travel Advisories

If you ignore the FCO’s advisories and enter countries it has marked as unsafe due to Ebola – Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone at the moment – then don’t expect your provider to bail you out if you contract the dreaded disease. Simply put, you’ll have to be responsible for your own welfare if you travel against the FCO’s advice.

If, however, you are infected by the virus in any other country, your provider is expected to cover the expenses involved. This is extremely unlikely to happen outside of the aforementioned countries, but it is reassuring to know that the FCO will pitch in the consumer’s favour if it does happen.

Delays Due to Ebola Screenings

Providers are very unlikely to reimburse you if you are unable to make your flight on time due to enhanced airport screenings that test for the Ebola virus. Such a situation, however, is rare since the heaviest screenings are for inbound airline passengers arriving from West African countries. It is nonetheless a good idea to arrive a few hours before departure just in case these delays spill over and start affecting outbound flights as well.

Getting In Touch with Local Embassies or Health Ministries

The effects of contagious diseases evolve over time, with advisories being released as the need arises. This is why it is always a good idea to get in touch with the embassies or health ministries of countries you are visiting – especially those in West Africa where the risk of Ebola infection is highest. The information you can gather from doing so will help you better determine if the virus will come in as a risk factor when applying for your family travel insurance.

Keep these titbits in mind and you’ll be able to rest easier now that you know how to better work with your provider when it comes to Ebola and other infectious diseases.

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Inform Yourself As a Form of Travel Insurance, With Smartraveller

Taking an overseas trip will always engender equal parts excitement and panic… and that is not necessarily a bad thing! That nagging fear of the unknown is what prompts us to take measures to inform and protect ourselves, like making inquiries, taking out travel insurance, and being vaccinated. Making assumptions when you are overseas can be a quick route to hospital, jail, and in extreme cases, a coffin. When it comes to informing yourself, nobody has better, more comprehensive and trustworthy evidence than the Smartraveller site run by the Australian government. Here we look at the site’s main sections and features, and why they create a form of primary travel insurance for you!

Travel advisories

There are some things that even travel insurance, useful though it is, cannot protect you against. Illnesses and injuries can have lasting implications, beyond an immediate need for medical assistance or evacuation. Reimbursement of expenses for many victims of crime will simply not return their lives to the states they were in beforehand. That is why the Smartraveller site issues advisories for most countries around the world where Australia has a consulate. The site ranks countries according to five levels of security risk. These are:

* 1. Be alert to your own security
* 2. Exercise caution and monitor developments that might affect your safety
* 3. Exercise a high degree of caution
* 4. Reconsider your need to travel
* 5. Advised not to travel

The government bases this advice on reports and requests for assistance from Australian consulates overseas, intelligence reports from Australian missions and ASIO threat assessments, and advisories prepared by other allied countries like the UK, Canada, the US and New Zealand. The following countries are, at the time of writing, on the ‘Advised against all travel’ list – a knowledge of current events will make the reasons for these obvious:

* Afghanistan
* Burundi
* Central African Republic
* Chad
* Iraq
* Somalia
* Sudan

Subscription service

The Smartraveller site offers you the option to subscribe to their travel advisories, as well as bulletins relating to current popular events in different countries. Bulletins cover events like the Hajj in Saudi Arabia (annual pilgrimage to Mecca), the soccer World Cup, pandemics, and new requirements for some countries.

Travel insurance advice

The Smartraveller site offers the very sage advice that if you can’t afford travel insurance, you can’t afford to travel. They give you quite a few case studies of instances where the Australian consulate has helped travellers who weren’t insured, and the third party costs that were incurred as a result. They also give you tips on how to choose a travel insurance policy, and what is not covered.

Country Guides

There are comprehensive, amazingly useful country guides for just about every overseas destination on the Smartraveller site. This information will cover things that travel insurance will not – for example, notable local laws that your insurance can’t help you if you break, health issues and which vaccinations are required, and safety and security issues.

Travel tips

There is an enormous section with information relating to many activities you can engage in no matter what country you are visiting. Some examples include:

* Arrested or jailed overseas
* International Driving Permits
* International Financial Scams
* Living and Working Overseas
* Mobile phones and other options for staying in touch while overseas
* Tips for travelling parents
* Travelling Seniors

Avoiding Crime and Terrorism in International Travel

Airlines are scrambling as terrorism has reared its ugly head once again. More security creates longer lines and more hassles for travelers. The possibility of terrorism isn’t always a traveler’s first thought when planning an exotic getaway. Certainly guests at the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta on July 17, 2009 didn’t plan their trips to include a hotel bomb. A tourist’s first thought when entering Playas del Coco in Costa Rica may not be the possibility of a drug-related mugging. So what can a traveler do to avoid these types of dangerous situations?

Unfortunately, criminals of all types strike when they like and where they can, so no methods are fool proof. But here are some best practices that can keep you from becoming the next victim while still enjoying the local color.

1. Watch travel advisories. The State Department issues advisories to US citizens who are considering travel to a country with travel concerns. Keep in mind that these travel advisories are issued on the basis of complaints to the local US embassies. Actual conditions in the locations where you will be traveling may be better or worse than advised. If you are traveling within 75 miles of an international border, also check advisories for the neighboring country. Recent news from the areas where you will be traveling may be available on the internet and can be a good gauge of local conditions.

2. Moderate your vacation expectations. If terrorism is the primary object, criminals will target hotels and resorts that cater to Western businessmen and well-heeled travelers. High profile victims create the most news coverage. Besides being less crowded, more moderate hotels may have fewer amenities but be under less threat. Smaller resorts with fewer guests can provide more privacy while being less likely to be a target. This deterrent works mainly for terrorism and not necessarily for other crimes.

3. Don’t wander too far off of the beaten path. An active international community can, however, offer some protection from crimes like kidnaping. Usually there is a greater local police presence and sensitivity to protecting foreigners. So if you are going trekking through the bush somewhere, remember to be on your guard. Help may not be handy. But what may be handy is having travel insurance that covers kidnap-ransom and terrorism.

4. Travel less conspicuously. Other than some countries in Europe, the nationals in most countries dress more modestly than many Americans. This is both in the amount of skin covered and in less flashy materials. Dressing down in both length and style can make you less noticeable to thieves. Leaving your jewelry at home before an international trip is also a good idea. This includes wedding rings.

Also check the specifics of your travel plans with your travel insurance agent for the best deal that still offers the coverage you will need. And have a safe vacation.

Travel Advice – Vital Information for Personal Safety

Travel advice and advisories are vital and informative guides to travelers especially to international destinations and cover specific guidelines and regulations concerning several factors like entry and exit requirements, health and safety, local laws, culture and customs, weather conditions, security issues and so on.

Visitors to any part of the world must ensure that they look up travel advice and advisories while planning vacations and ensure that all useful and vital information is at hand.

Every year, governments around the world issue travel advice or travel warnings, as the case may be. While some are obvious considering the security threats that loom large in sensitive areas, others seem unnecessary or sometimes exaggerated. However, a traveler who ignores such advice will be completely at a loss when faced with serious situations or repercussions.

It’s quite common to come across alerts that advise visitors ‘to exercise caution and be vigilant in public places or when using public transportation especially where crowds gather or during festival and holiday times’. The US advises its international travelers to monitor world news while on the move, to stay in touch with family so that someone is aware of their current location and to also approach the local embassy or high commission for assistance.

Types of travel advisories

Travel advice includes a wide range of areas such as:

• Travel documentation and insurance
• Health and medical bulletins and preventive measures
• Security threats
• Local weather conditions and natural calamities
• Traveling with children or elders
• Traveling with animals
• Local holidays and festivals, and many others.

Importance of travel warnings or advisories

Most issues concern general information and alerts. However, while most of them are prompted for security reasons including disease outbreaks, economic conditions, natural disasters, political upheavals etc. some are placed on record when two countries are not sharing the best of relations and the situation is tense.

While political ties between countries need not necessarily affect travelers, any situation leading to an embargo, conflict, protests or clamp on movement of goods or freezing of economic relations must be treated with caution. Many adventure and thrill seeking travelers sometimes treat these advisories with disdain landing themselves in dire situations and having to be bailed out. When something goes wrong, it’s quite easy for the traveler to blame a particular government for not informing them well in advance and expect their government agencies to come to their rescue even if the situation was created in the first place due to their negligence. Voluntarily defying a travel advisory is not illegal although there can be a huge price to pay for it.

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