Travel insurance for self planned holidays

Nowadays many people are choosing to book their holidays by themselves rather than directly through a travel agent as part of a package deal. This means many people are now choosing to book their own flights and accommodation separately, and is one way many are saving money on holidays each year.

However, one area that you should not overlook is ensuring you have booked your own travel insurance too. This is especially important with the recent economic climate seeing airlines and hotels going bust, thus leaving a lot of customer in the lurch or even worse stranded, due to insufficient insurance cover.

Over the last few years companies such as Libra Holidays and Kiss Flights collapsed, which had an unfortunate impact on their customers around that time and many found their holiday was ruined due to lack of decent insurance cover. The Icelandic volcano disruptions in 2010, also caused mayhem around many top tourist destinations around the world, when thousands of travellers had flights cancelled and experienced massive delays. This saw many people incur unforeseen costs such as accommodation and alternative transport to cater for themselves.

To ensure that you are as protected as possible in the future for any similar events here are some tips that you should look out for when taking out a cheap travel insurance policy to help ease your mind when travelling abroad.

• Scheduled Airline Failure Insurance (SAFI) is section included travel insurance, that offers you protection specifiably for flights. This is something that most travel insurance policies will usually include, but you should always double check to make sure it is included. If it is not then be sure to ask about getting this as an extra to your chosen policy. You should also check that this covers you for the specific airline that you are going to be travelling with, a sometimes certain insurance companies do not include all airlines.

• Before committing to a specific travel insurance policy, ensure that you are covered for Supplier Failure. Where most companies will include this as standard there are some providers who do not, therefore you may have to include this as an extra. The purpose of Supplier Failure is to ensure that you are catered for in the event a tour company, accommodations such as your hotel, or the airline you are going to fly with goes bust. If your airline does happen to experience difficulties then you may be able to get a refund for the flight, or make a claim for any extra money that you had to spend to be able to continue with your original holiday plans.

• A similar rule is usually in place for accommodation. For example, your hotel goes bust leaving you without accommodation you will be in need of somewhere else to stay. If you are covered for supplier failure then you may able to obtain refund on accommodation. You should however, always check your specific insurance policy and the section for supplier failure to double check your providers level of cover and support offered to you in specific events.