Travel insurance
Insurance covering the risks of a trip: cancellation or curtailment, medical costs and repatriation abroad, baggage, liability; often included in premium bank cards.
Travel insurance combines several covers. Cancellation reimburses non-refundable sums paid when the traveler must give up the trip for a reason listed in the policy: illness, accident, death of a relative, redundancy, sometimes any justified reason in the broadest plans. Curtailment reimburses the unused part of the stay in case of early return. Assistance pays medical costs abroad, often considerable outside Europe, and medical repatriation, which can cost tens of thousands of euros. Added to these are baggage, flight delay and personal liability abroad. For some visas, notably the Schengen area, insurance covering at least 30,000 euros of medical costs is required. The product is sold by travel agencies and platforms, by insurers directly, and above all built into bank cards, whose covers are often conditional on paying for the trip with the card and carry limits and exclusions that cardholders know poorly. Overlapping cover between card, home policy and insurance bought online is common, and the rules on cumulative insurance apply. The 2020 pandemic highlighted the exclusion of epidemics, since reinstated in some plans under conditions.
Textbook case: a traveler collapses in New York and must be hospitalized for five days; the bill reaches 60,000 dollars, then a medical repatriation is needed. Her bank card caps medical costs at 11,000 euros; the travel insurance she had bought on top pays the rest and the repatriation.
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