The cheapest travel insurance policy and the right one are almost never the same thing, and the gap between them only becomes visible at the worst possible moment — standing at a foreign hospital desk, or watching a delayed flight board status flip to "cancelled". With the British summer holiday season now in full swing, it's worth understanding what a travel policy actually does before you pick the first result on a comparison site.
Travel cover is one of the few insurances where the cheapest option can genuinely leave you tens of thousands of pounds exposed. A £6 single-trip policy isn't a bargain if it caps medical expenses too low to cover an air ambulance home.
What you're actually buying
A travel policy bundles several quite different protections under one name, and the bit that matters most is rarely the bit holidaymakers worry about. People fret over lost luggage, which is usually capped at a modest few hundred pounds and largely duplicated by your home contents cover anyway. The protection that earns its keep is emergency medical cover and repatriation — getting you treated abroad and, if necessary, flown home.
This is where the numbers get serious. A medical evacuation from the United States can run well beyond £100,000. Even within Europe, where the UK Global Health Insurance Card (GHIC) covers state treatment, the GHIC does nothing about repatriation, private clinics, or a medically-equipped flight home. The GHIC is a useful supplement, never a substitute — anyone who treats it as full cover is one bad accident away from a catastrophic bill.
The cover levels that matter
When you compare policies, look past the headline price and check four limits in particular:
- Emergency medical and repatriation — this should run into the millions, not the thousands. Anything under £1m is a warning sign; £5m or "unlimited" is what you want, and it costs surprisingly little to upgrade to.
- Cancellation cover, set high enough to refund the full cost of your trip if you can't go — useful only if it's at least equal to what you've actually paid out.
- The excess — the amount you pay before the insurer does — which a suspiciously cheap policy often loads to £250 or more per claim, quietly making small claims pointless.
- Specific exclusions, the part nobody reads until it's too late, covering everything from "reasonable care" clauses to activities you didn't think counted as risky.
Read the medical-cover limit first and the price second. A policy that's £4 cheaper but caps repatriation at £250,000 isn't cheaper in any sense that matters — it's just gambling with a bigger downside.
The declaration that voids more claims than anything else
If you have any pre-existing medical condition — and that includes things people forget to mention, like well-controlled blood pressure or a hospital visit two years ago — you must declare it. An undeclared condition is the single most common reason a travel claim is refused outright. It feels tedious to list every prescription, but a five-minute declaration is what stands between you and a rejected six-figure medical bill. Declaring a condition may nudge the premium up; not declaring it can void the entire policy.
Single trip or annual — and when each makes sense
If you take one holiday a year, a single-trip policy is fine and usually cheaper. The moment you take three or more trips in a year, though, an annual multi-trip policy almost always wins on total cost — and it quietly covers the weekend city breaks and the surprise work trip you'd otherwise have travelled on with no cover at all. For most families who manage a summer holiday plus a couple of short breaks, the annual policy is the better buy.
One genuine catch with annual policies: they typically cap the length of any single trip, often at 31 days. If you're planning a long summer away — a month-plus trip, a sabbatical, an extended visit to family overseas — check that limit before you rely on the annual cover, because a 45-day trip on a 31-day policy means the back two weeks are uninsured.
Buy travel insurance the way you'd buy a parachute. The day you need it, the price you paid is the least interesting number; what matters is whether it does the one job you bought it for.
Buy it on the day you book
Here's the timing detail most travellers get wrong: cancellation cover only protects you from the moment the policy starts. Buy your insurance when you book the holiday — not the week before you fly — and you're covered for the gap in between, when illness, a family emergency, or a tour operator collapse could otherwise cost you the whole non-refundable trip. Waiting until departure week throws away weeks of cancellation protection you've effectively already paid for.
This is general guidance rather than advice tailored to your trip — your destination, your health, and what you've already spent all shape the right level of cover. But the traveller who reads the medical limit, declares every condition, and buys on booking day has handled the three things that actually decide whether a policy pays out. The colour of the brochure and the size of the luggage allowance are, frankly, the parts that matter least.