Answered: How Much Does Cruise Insurance Cost? | Cruzely.com
note: neither cruzely.com nor the author are insurance professionals. be sure to review any policies and ask your insurance company any questions you may have.
We are affiliates of insuremytrip, linked below. We receive a small commission if you purchase travel insurance through the links in this article, at no cost to you.
You just spent thousands of dollars on an amazing cruise that you can’t wait to continue on. then you spent hundreds more on a flight to miami to set sail and a hotel room the night before.
then, the unfortunate happens. a week before your trip you get hurt in an accident and there is no way you can make it. Sure, you can cancel your trip, but being so close to your departure date, you’re likely to get cancellation penalties that eat up your refund.
In other words, you’ve run out of a lot of money and you don’t have any trips to prove it.
Or what if you get hurt or sick on your cruise? or what if you lose it entirely because your flight is delayed? or what happens if your luggage is lost in transit?
All of these scenarios are not meant to scare you. they are meant to show you how travel insurance for your cruise can help. In these scenarios, travel insurance may cover you and provide compensation for any money you may have lost out of pocket.
why we think cruise insurance is important, but some people don’t buy
In fact, you may be surprised at what travel insurance can cover for your cruise. From having to cancel your cruise for certain reasons, being delayed and missing the ship, getting injured or sick and requiring medical attention, or even having an emergency that interrupts your trip, insurance can cover you in many cases.
You can even purchase some plans that allow you to cancel your trip for any reason and still receive compensation.
However, many cruise ship passengers forego insurance. on the one hand, they think they don’t need it. It is true that most of the time you will not need or use cruise insurance. most trips go smoothly. But just like health or car insurance, having it when there’s an incident is invaluable.
We believe that others do not buy insurance because they think it costs too much. what’s surprising is how affordable insuring your cruise really can be.
The rule of thumb we’ve always followed is that travel insurance should cost 5-7% of your cruise. so for a $3,000 trip, they say you can expect pay between $150 and $210.
That’s not chicken feed, but it’s also a relatively affordable price for some peace of mind.
cruise insurance price
We wanted to see how true that 5-7% actually is. To investigate, we use a site called insuremytrip.com. insuremytrip is a travel insurance broker. With one search, you can get prices from numerous companies to insure your trip. it’s like google for travel insurance.
We recently ran several scenarios to see how much cruise insurance really costs. All searches were for a week-long Caribbean cruise for two and only searched for policies that provided comprehensive coverage. this includes cancellation coverage, emergency medical coverage, and medical evacuation coverage.
Please note that, like other forms of insurance, you can increase or decrease the level of benefits. therefore, with lower benefits, you can expect lower prices.
here are the results:
As you can see, prices vary much more than the 5-7% range. We found that depending on your age and the level of coverage you select, it can range from 3% of the cost of the trip to more than 12% of the cost of the trip.
The variation has a lot to do with coverage levels. As with car insurance, basic travel insurance is much cheaper than premium plans, but has a lower level of coverage. We recommend looking at a couple of mid-priced plans to see their coverage levels before automatically opting for the cheapest plan.
Do I have to surf with insurance?
In the vast majority of cases, travel insurance for your cruise is optional. If you don’t want to spend the money, you don’t have to. some cruise lines, however, require coverage if you cruise without getting vaccinated (at least for now).
Other than that, the decision whether or not to buy insurance is up to you. personally, we like to have some protection when the price of the cruise starts to climb into the thousands of dollars or we will be sailing for more than four days. in this case, it’s good to have some peace of mind in case something happens.
To find the best deal on travel insurance, we suggest using a site like insuremytrip.com. This site can search for several different insurers at once so you can compare multiple quotes, see how much your cruise insurance might cost, and what it covers. get a free quote here.
For more details on purchasing cruise insurance, be sure to read our guide on the subject.
