Travel Insurance Education Key For Gappers And Parents
Approximately one quarter of travelers do not take out travel insurance, recent reports indicate.
While the recent tragic deaths of five young British women traveling through Ecuador on their gap year might have shed somber light on the importance of being properly covered, many students are too broke to even consider purchasing travel insurance once they’ve shelled-out cash for the rest of their travel costs.
"If you look at our cost calculator for going on a gap year, you see that insurance comes quite far down the list," independent travel site director, Phil Murray, told The Telegraph recently. "Perhaps once all the other costs have been factored in, people are not thinking so much about insurance."
As response to a growing number of concerns from parents over protection for their traveling children, many travel insurance providers have pushed their products to the forefront, with sites like flexicover.co.uk and studentflights.co.uk offering deals and discounts for gap year travelers to consider.
While a number of providers have tailor-made coverage packages to suit the gappers’ needs, costs can be quite high due to the likelihood that young travelers will place themselves into extreme situations while away from home. Bungee jumping and skydiving remain among the most popular activities among backpackers.
"Travel insurance is a ‘must have’ for students spending time abroad because it provides coverage where many traditional healthcare plans leave off," said Jim Grace, President and CEO of InsureMyTrip.com in another recent report on the issue.
It is essential that all the facets of travel insurance be explored by both the gapper and their parents, with both parties examining the best options for a sometimes worse-case scenario. While overlooking a potentially dangerous situation as a possibility while traveling is an obvious naivety, students and parents should also consider travel insurance for minor inconveniences, including flight cancellations and lost luggage.
In a recent report by The Times Ian French, who set up GapAid along with his wife when his daughter Georgia, 19, was killed in a 2007 coach crash in Peru, stressed the importance of educating young travelers and their parents about the dangers of overseas travel.
"These trips are done to a budget, and normally the students are focused on finding the cheapest possible way to get somewhere," French told The Times. "We found out after Georgia’s death that she and her friends considered flying down to Cuzco but got the bus to save $20 or so. We hear this is often the way. The fact is young people are not focused on safety. They are focused on fun and while I don’t want to take away the fun, there are regulations in place that make transport safe in this country that simply don’t exist in a developing country."
In The Times report, reporter Rosemary Bennett found The Foreign Office to have stated that nearly a quarter of all gap year travelers are likely to experience theft or illness while traveling, among other negative occurrences.
"The number one thing we want to see is the companies selling these gap year deals to exercise a duty of care to the young people," French told Bennett. "If they are taking their money, they have to look at them, yet we see time and time again transport on unsafe vehicles, attacks on people and even kidnappings."
Natalya is an author of several articles pertaining to Travel Insurance She is known for her expertise on the subject and on other Business and Finance related articles.