How Travel Insurance Helps When Your Clients are Sick and Stuck Abroad

The amount your clients spend on medical expenses to treat COVID-19 while traveling can vary tremendously based on where they get sick and how sick they get.

Also, if your clients get sick in a remote location or have to be transported to a different medical facility, the cost of that transfer can hit six figures. Fortunately, all of our travel insurance plans can provide reimbursement for emergency medical and evacuation expenses.

If a traveler is insured and needs to be hospitalized, here’s what you can expect:

Evaluate Care

Our team of medical experts will collect medical information, establish a point of contact with the treating medical facility, speak with the traveler and analyze the quality of care that the patient is receiving.

Covered Expenses: The plan can provide coverage for medical costs that are not covered by the traveler’s primary health insurance.

Assess Treating Facility

Depending on the quality of care, severity of the condition and other factors, our medical experts will determine if medical evacuation or repatriation is necessary to properly care for the traveler’s condition.

Covered Expenses: With Emergency Assistance and Transportation coverage, the plan can provide coverage for the traveler’s medical evacuation or repatriation costs.

Monitor

If necessary, the patient is transported to an appropriate medical facility. Our team of medical experts will monitor the traveler’s hospitalization until they are released and follows national travel guidelines to arrange the traveler’s return trip home.

Whether or not your client needs to be hospitalized, if the traveler or their traveling companion tested positive for COVID-19 they may need to isolate before returning home. The costs of isolation can vary greatly depending on the country and facility where they’re isolating.

As Lonely Planet reports, “In many cases, your hotel will allow you to extend your stay and quarantine on premises. Some hotels will move guests into government-mandated quarantine sites, which can vary from five-star accommodations to bare-bones barracks. Although a handful of these facilities, like those in Greece, are paid for by the government, you will often foot the bill.”

Nerdwallet recommends that travelers budget at least $100 a night just for the lodging component of their quarantine, with a 10-night minimum – and remember, meals and tests are extra.

Fortunately, if your clients are diagnosed with COVID-19 or another sickness and are insured, they can be reimbursed for certain additional unexpected expenses on their trip, such as lodging if the plan terms are met.

This really comes in handy in a scenario like the following: It’s the last day of their vacation, your clients are being tested prior to departure, and someone in their traveling party tests positive.

It’s a not-uncommon scenario, unfortunately, but the good news is that travel insurance can help. If a self-isolation period is necessary before the traveler can return home, we will arrange local accommodations.

Covered Expenses: Travel Delay coverage can reimburse your clients for additional costs, such as accommodations and food. This also applies if a traveling companion is diagnosed with COVID-19, and your clients are not, but they still have to pay for additional lodging at their destination.

We will also check in with your client throughout the self-isolation period to ensure that their condition is stable and in case they require medical treatment.

Extension of Coverage

Travel insurance doesn’t just end if a trip is unexpectedly extended beyond the scheduled return date. The insurance coverages will be extended if the entire trip is covered by the plan and the return is delayed by unavoidable circumstances beyond your client's control. If coverage is extended, coverage will end either on the date your client reaches their originally scheduled return destination or seven days after their scheduled return date, whichever comes first.

Return Home

If COVID-19 forces your client to extend their stay and they have to rebook flights, your client could be at the airlines’ mercy. A last-minute flight could cost a lot more than what your client paid for their ticket originally.

Luckily, with one of our plans, we can help arrange the traveler’s return trip home.

Covered Expenses: With Trip Interruption coverage, your client can be reimbursed for unused, non-refundable, pre-paid trip costs and additional transportation costs to return home or rejoin their group.

Considering all that can happen if your client is sick and stuck abroad these days it’s clear that travel insurance can be valuable – and with COVID-19 raising the odds of that possibility, it’s more valuable than ever.

If you have questions about how our travel insurance plans can provide coverage for COVID-19, read the FAQs.