One of the first decisions you have to make when taking out travel
insurance is whether to buy solely for the planned trip you intend to
make or take out a policy that covers more than one trip, widely termed
the annual multi-trip policy. The best way to approach this is to look
at the advantages of a multi-trip policy but set them against their
limitations and then decide on what best suits your needs.
So what does an annual multi-trip travel insurance
policy offer you over a single trip policy? Firstly, the more trips you
take in a year, the more cost effective an annual policy will be and
one purchase lasts the whole year. Many annual travel insurance
policies have options, such as Winter Sports cover, included as
standard but do check the small print. It is normally possible to
extend the individual trip duration for a small extra premium, say from
the industry standard of 31 days a trip to 60 or 90 days, which is a
much cheaper option than buying a single trip policy for the same
period.
But set against this, an annual policy only provides cover for the
area you have selected. That is, if you take out an annual policy that
provides cover for Europe but then book a holiday later in the year to
the USA, then this destination will not be covered so it is something
to consider when buying such a policy. The annual policy is a more
expensive up front cost though there are some very good internet annual travel insurance
deals to be had. Many insurers impose stricter age restrictions for
taking out an annual policy compared to the single trip equivalent and
there might be restrictions on family annual travel insurance policies that prevent children from travelling independently.
The place to look is on the internet and most travel insurance providers will provide an annual travel insurance
quote at the same time as giving you the single trip price so this
helps to compare at the time of taking out insurance. If you can plan
ahead and want the flexibility of taking more than one holiday or trip
abroad, then buying an annual travel insurance policy is, more often than not, a good investment, but do make sure that what you buy satisfies your particular needs.
Keith McGregor is a partner of Strawberrysoup, a web design agency with offices in Chichester and Bournemouth. Strawberrysoup specialise in creative web design, content managed websites, search engine optimisation, search engine marketing and graphic design
