We have no doubt you are ready to go and Exotic Asia is calling, but no one wants to lose substantial money in changing or cancelling travel plans. The decision to “go or not to go” must be yours alone, and in this post-pandemic world Asia Desk wants to make sure that decision is not clouded by financial considerations. To assure that, we are encouraging each of our guests to purchase some form of travel insurance to protect yourself.
Asia Desk, Ltd. does not sell travel insurance. We do however strongly recommend it and if you do not already have a preferred travel insurance provider, we can point you in the right direction to purchase travel insurance.
Important Note: On our final Payment Authorization form we require that you indicate if you have, or have not, purchased travel insurance. Again, purchasing travel insurance is at your sole discretion but, in our view, you should not leave home without it!
Travel Insurance Minimizes Risk to Your Financial Investement and Your Health & Safety
A custom-crafted trip can represent a sizable financial investment, and travel insurance can go a long way towards protecting this financial outlay. We have found that most last-minute trip cancelations are caused by illness or health concerns—and in many cases the health of a loved one, not the traveler! For example, a common cause would be an elderly parent who gets a sudden diagnosis and need care and support, which then precludes our client from making their trip. So to fully safeguard against losing portions of your investment with a late cancelation, a travel insurance policy with provisions for this kind of cancellation will very much minimize your financial risk.
We encourage you to purchase a policy with a broad cancellation policy covering health and illness, but also ideally for things like force majeure (sometimes called an Act of God), civil unrest, terrorism, or health emergencies, like a pandemic. The specifics of what travel insurance covers, and the rules governing this insurance, will vary from state to state, although many commonalities exist and most of these policies cover up to a certain percentage of your trip costs.
The absolute BEST way to minimize your risk is by purchasing a travel insurance policy with generous cancelation policy, or even a 'Cancel For Any Reason' (CFAR) policy, which is rare but can still be found. Although CFAR is the most expensive form of insurance, it affords the best protection against financial loss. As you think through this option, here is a helpful article than can help guide your decision-making process.
When purchasing a policy, we suggest that you find a policy that lets you insure the deposit first, and then allows you to increase your policy amount to cover the entire trip cost. In this way your entire trip will be covered. The objective of our advice is to lower your “out-of-pocket” expense to protect your investment in this trip. In most cases, the expense will be a relatively small percentage of the total trip cost.
Where To Start?
If you have not purchased trip insurance before, a good starting point would be this helpful article by our friends over at WendyPerrin.com. To find a reputable insurer, we suggest you look into TravelEx; they are one of the best in the business and their plans typically cover cancelation, medical, and evacuation. Plus, their claims process is simple and straightforward. Alternatively, for value plans, we suggest that you use the services of Squaremouth to compare policies and choose one which fits you.
IMPORTANT: We feel that medical evacuation coverage is a must in this part of the world, and so strongly recommend making sure that a rigorous evacuation clause is included in your conventional travel insurance policy. If your policy does not cover Evacuation, or if you want additional peace-of-mind, we recommend a MedJet membership. Medjet is considered one of the top evacuation organizations and they have an aircraft hub in Bangkok making medical evacuation a matter of hours rather than days in an emergency.
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