Every Nigerian who has travelled remembers those days when travelling with transport lines; after you’ve paid your bus fare, some guy comes to the window and asks you to sign your name on a manifesto and pay a certain fee. Most Nigerians normally refuse to sign it or pay the extra fees because once the trip is over and nothing goes wrong, their money is never refunded.
Due to such experiences, we usually question the need for Travel Insurance when approached by an Insurance Broker.
Here are reasons you need one:
Financial loss due to prepayments
Out-of-pocket risks occur when you have to pay non-refundable deposits or fees in advance for certain services. Tour packages, hotel bookings, flight or cruise ticket purchases and last-minute airline changes with higher fare charges, are some travel logistics that may require upfront payments. Some may have flexible cancellation policies, others may not. They may promise you a partial refund or voucher for future travel. But that just means you’ve lost a ton of cash due to unavoidable circumstances that caused you to forestall your travel plans.
Medical emergencies
No one hopes for anything bad to happen while travelling but medical emergencies are unpredictable. The emergency could be a sick companion, a natural disaster or an armed robbery attack that left you with bodily harm. There are people whose allergies or illness get triggered for the first time by something in a new environment. Emergency health care issues that arise, when you are abroad or on an interstate journey away from home, can overbear sometimes. Without a medical insurance, getting hospitals to attend to you might be a challenge.
Loss of personal possessions
It’s advisable not to travel with expensive items, but those are not the only things at risk of getting lost. Sometimes in the process of packing bags into buses or aeroplanes, attendants can miss a luggage or two. You could be in transit and misplace your bag while hurrying through an airport terminal to catch your next flight. But the most popular way of losing personal possessions is by theft. You might be fortunate to recover the stolen item but that’s unlikely.
These risks associated with travelling is the reason some people dread travelling. To put your mind at ease, get yourself a travel insurance package. The best kind of travel insurance to have is the type you register with a certified insurance firm. They have different policies which could be useful for selecting the specific travel risk you are concerned about. If you travel often, go for annual combo packages.
For most trips which go on without a hitch, a travel insurance might seem like an unnecessary expense but getting it guarantees you peace of mind.
