Should You Buy Trip Insurance from a Cruise Line?

When it comes to important purchases and managing your money, you want to make sure you’re making the right decision.

If you’re buying a new computer, you talk to tech experts. If you need someone to help manage your retirement funds, you go to an investment broker. If you need to rewire your house, you hire a certified electrician. And in each of these scenarios, you probably aren’t choosing the first listing you see. You do your research. 

The same goes for when you purchase travel insurance to cover your cruise vacation. Be sure to consider all your options and choose the provider and plan that offer the best protection for your trip.

What Type of Insurance Do You Need for a Cruise?

To use our earlier example again, when you need to rewire your house, you’re going to hire someone who knows a lot about electrical systems and building codes. You want a master electrician, not a plumber, even if they both work in home improvement. A licensed travel insurance agent can provide similar service as the electrician in the sense that they’re each exceptional in their respective field.

Cruise lines may offer travel insurance and do so in a temptingly convenient way, by adding it to the price of your cruise. However, you might not be getting the right coverage, no matter how easy it seems.

It’s worth looking elsewhere to make sure you choose the best travel insurance for your trip. We recommend talking with an agent who sells travel insurance or a company that specializes in travel insurance, like Seven Corners. 

Best Travel Insurance for a Cruise

Good cruise insurance includes protection for trip cancellations, delays, and interruptions from the beginning to the end of your trip. For example, if you are flying to the port where your cruise will depart, you want coverage for your airline fare if it’s nonrefundable. Insurance from the cruise line may not cover trip costs apart from the cruise itself.  

Travel insurance for missed connections

An important benefit you may not see on trip insurance offered by cruise lines addresses one of cruisers’ biggest worries: “What if my plane is late, and I miss the ship?” Seven Corners’ cruise insurance includes missed cruise connection benefits because it’s designed specifically for cruises.

If you miss your cruise ship due to a delay that meets the time length stated in your plan document (three hours for Seven Corners’ RoundTrip Basic and RoundTrip Choice), the missed cruise and tour connection benefit reimburses you for these items: 

• Additional transportation costs to join your cruise. 
• Accommodations and meals. 

All trip insurance details covered reasons for which benefits are paid. Our plans provide the missed connection benefit if you miss the ship for one of these covered reasons: 

• Your plane is late. 
• A documented inclement weather condition.
• You are under quarantine*. 
• You experience a hijacking.
• A strike occurs that affects you and your travel plans. 
• A natural disaster affects you and your travel plans.
• A terrorist event or a riot occurs that affects you and/or your travel plans. 

Optional Cancel for Any Reason (CFAR) 

Cancel for Any Reason is an optional benefit you may not see offered by the cruise line. Most trip insurance includes a list of covered reasons that trigger benefits. One of these triggers — including sickness, injury, traffic accident, and weather, for example — must occur before you can cancel your trip. But when you add the optional CFAR benefit, you can cancel your entire trip for any reason you wish**.

This benefit costs extra, and you are reimbursed for 75% of your nonrefundable trip costs instead of 100%, but if you have an unusual situation you feel could cause you to cancel your trip, it’s worth it. Seven Corners offers CFAR on our RoundTrip Basic and RoundTrip Choice plans.

You must select this benefit within the time-sensitive period and pay the additional plan cost to receive it. For the plans mentioned above, the phrase “time-sensitive period” means you must purchase your plan within 20 days of the date your initial payment or deposit of your trip is received, and within 15 days of payment for any subsequent travel arrangements added to your trip. Other terms apply.

Pre-existing conditions

If you have health conditions or you are traveling with someone who does, it’s important to secure coverage for pre-existing conditions. Not all trip insurance covers pre-existing conditions, so it's recommended that you talk to a licensed travel insurance agent to better understand if the waiver is included in a plan.

To get the waiver, you must buy the plan within the time-sensitive period, which varies by plan. For example, like the CFAR coverage we mentioned above, you must purchase our RoundTrip Choice plan within 20 days of the date your initial payment or deposit for your trip is received and insure the cost of subsequent travel arrangements added to your trip within 15 days of the date you paid for each of them in order to receive the waiver. You must also be medically able to travel at the time you buy the plan.

Need Help Finding the Right Trip Insurance for Your Cruise?

Now that you know the answer to “Do I need special travel insurance for a cruise?” contact our sales team for help choosing the best plan for your situation. You can reach them at sales@sevencorners.com or by calling 800.335.0611 or 317.818.2809.  

*Quarantined means You or Your Traveling Companion, Family Member, Business Partner are forced into medical isolation by a recognized government authority, their authorized deputies, medical examiners, or Physician to prevent the spread of the disease due to You or Your Traveling Companion, Family Member, Business Partner either having or being suspected of having a contagious disease, infection or contamination while traveling outside of his/her country of Primary Residence. An embargo preventing You or Your Traveling Companion, Family Member, or Business Partner from entering a country is not a quarantine.

**Cancel for Any Reason does not cover the failure of the Travel Supplier to provide the bargained-for Travel Arrangements due to cessation of operations for any reason.