Congratulations!
Your family has decided to take a group vacation. It's going to be a good time of bonding and new experiences. As you are all intelligent people (good genes, right?) you've decided to purchase travel insurance for the trip. Before you dive into the process, here are some things to know when buying travel insurance for the whole family.
1. Know the States
If all your family members reside in the same state, you can put them all on the same policy. If everyone resides in different states, you'll have to do a separate policy for each state.
Why all that work? Different states have different laws, so every policy isn't the same. For example, New York residents aren't eligible for Cancel for Any Reason. So if Uncle Joe resides in New York, but you reside in Pennsylvania, your coverages will differ.
2. The Difference Between Ages
When purchasing for the whole family, you may notice that your 12 year old's policy is significantly less than the 70 year old of the group. People 18 and under are a set rate, and then with each age group the cost gets higher.
At first sight, it may seem strange, but it's for liability reasons. As people age, they become more at risk for injuries and illnesses. Therefore the chance of them having to make a claim is higher. So the price of their insurance goes up so that we can properly cover them.
3. Who Is Covered
We get a lot of questions on who exactly is covered by the policy. To put it simply, if their name is on the policy, they're covered.
When it comes to trip cancellation and trip interruption, travel insurance may cover extended family. At TravelSafe, we cover aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, in-laws, and step-relations. Basically everyone except cousins, 3rd generations, and pets. Of course, the event must a due to a serious medical condition that requires and covered traveler to cancel or interrupt their trip.
4. How should people be covered
It's common for one person to book the trip and also take out insurance for the trip. But, does EVERYONE need to be covered under the policy?
The short answer is yes, here's how:
If one person quotes insurance for everyone, they cover the cost of any prepaid arrangements to the specific traveler. If each traveler has a plane ticket, that will go under that traveler's trip cost. Shared accommodations should be split evenly between all traveling members. Often times quoted premiums cover every traveler on the plan, but each traveler's plan cost could be different, especially if their age and trip cost vary.
For example: If the travel invoice says each traveler's flight was $473, each traveler should match their trip cost to the travel invoice.
To help you determine what kind of insurance you need, we recommend you using our useful flowchart here.
5. Managing Policies
You're purchasing your family's policies and you see there's options to put in emails. This is so that when the plans are purchased, the confirmation and plan documents will be sent to the policy holder. So, do you send them all to yourself, or to each individual policy-holder?
We suggest doing both. Email them to yourself first, and then forward them to each family member. That way everyone will have a chance to read their policy and understand their coverage, while still having them all in one place just in case someone loses theirs. If one of your policies happens to be lost in the void of the internet, feel free to reach out to us at info@travelsafe.com with your confirmation number and we'll send you another copy.
