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- Family Travel Insurance
Family Travel Insurance
If you are travelling for a family holiday, travel insurance is essential. Even if you are travelling to an EC country with an European E111 or the new ECard, you are only covered for basic medical services unless you have travel insurance. You can check out our Guide to Family Travel Insurance.
Guide to Family Travel Insurance
Family travel insurance is a must have protection for travel abroad including those day trips to France, because you never know what can happen and the family's protection must be paramount in everyone's mind.
The easiest way to insure the family for medical emergencies or for loss of possessions by theft or damage would be to take out a family annual travel insurance policy this is a once a year purchase and will provide full protection to all members of the family for medical, possessions, loss of documents and passports, cancellations of holidays and reimbursement of costs as well as having to cut the trip short to come home for a serious family problem.
Family Travel Insurance is better known as annual multi-trip travel insurance and is widely available and can be purchased from high street travel agents [although not particularly good value] or on the Internet where hundreds of web sites offer better priced annual family travel insurance online. Alternatively you can find family travel insurance offered with some leading credit cards, and banks and building societies are also offering similar policies for the family travel insurance.
The best thing is to shop around and compare family travel insurance products and prices before you choose as prices vary a great deal for your family travel insurance.
One question to ask if your children are covered if they travel separately as some family travel insurance policies insist they have to travel with an insured parent. This is particular useful and will save money when your children go on school trips as you won't have to pay for the travel insurance again.
Another question to ask is about the eldest permitted age of a child as some family travel insurance policies state that once the child/dependant becomes 18 they have to leave the family policy and have their own policy in their own name. Some policies will permit the dependant to stay on the family travel policy if they are in full-time education up to the age of 24. Some Family Travel insurance polices are available for single parents although this is not all that common.
Should any member of your family have a pre-existing medical condition it is wise to find an insurance policy that will cover the condition however this will mean the whole family will have to be on the same family travel insurance policy as you can not segregate the family members on separate policies in the event you may have to make a claim for cancellation of a proposed trip due to the child's medical condition unless you are all insured together.
Family Travel Insurance can also include some hazardous activities including some days per year for winter sports such as skiing, cover can be arranged for worldwide coverage and Europe only depending upon your travel plans.
Short trips to Europe and mini-breaks still require you to have adequate family travel insurance as we are taking more holidays and short trips especially at short notice means you don't have to worry about family travel insurance if you have an annual policy. You shouldn't rely on the European E111 which become the E-card in 2006 as this does not cover you for all medical eventualities and doesn't cover you for loss of possessions, cancellation, document replacement or lost money.
With a family travel insurance policy once a year you can simply book your trip and go with the peace of mind that everyone of your family is covered on the family travel insurance policy whether you travel all together or separately.
You may want to check out our Guidance notes about travel insurance if this is the first time that you have bought travel insurance online.