Considering International Travel Insurance

A recent incident and a conversation with a traveling friend highlighted the confusion and importance of international travel insurance. To begin most people consider travel insurance too expensive and on top of that they see it as very confusing and there’s truth in those beliefs.

Please note that this is written with a focus on American travelers but we are also aware of similar plans offered in Canada and other countries, but you will need to explore options based on your home country.

There are a number of different categories and types of travel insurance that apply to a number of travel plans and that can complicate the insurance decision. Generally, insurance is available to cover problems in five specific areas:

  • Trip Cancellation and Interruption
  • Theft of Property
  • Health and Accident coverage
  • Medical Repatriation
  • Life insurance

In truth, most travelers we talk to are too casual in deciding on travel insurance. This article will focus on three main areas:

  • First is a concern about having to cancel an expensive trip at the last minute and losing deposits and prepaid money.
  • The second is travel interruption caused by missing air connections or a cruise sailing.
  • Lastly are medical cost concerns while being out of the country.

One area that requires attention is exactly what are the conditions where the coverage takes affect and where it doesn’t apply. Insurance policies are very specific legal documents and all too often coverage we thought we had doesn’t apply in too many circumstances. Just recently in the news were a number of travelers faced with giving up their travel costs or putting their health in jeopardy because of the Covid pandemic.

As the Corona virus started spreading around the world and countries started closing their ports, cruise ships and their passengers were placed in a difficult position. Initially cruise ships started adjusting their itineraries instead of canceling cruises. Passengers that were worried about their health and wanted to cancel their cruise or were even acting on the advice of the government, soon discovered that insurance companies were concluding that those concerns were not covered by the cruise cancellation insurance and offered no refunds.

Even if the cost of insurance is significant, everyone should consider and evaluate what potential financial risk there are versus the actual cost of the insurance policy. With a long cruise the cost could be very high and while the insurance could be costly the loss could be even more significant if you have to cancel or should simply miss a sailing.

One area where many people leave themselves seriously in jeopardy involves international medical emergency insurance. Far too many people falsely think that their health insurance will cover them when they’re out of the country but the truth is that is rarely the case. Unless your health insurance specifically indicates that it covers international travel you are risking a catastrophic loss. In one example we know about a retired couple traveling in Europe believing that Medicare and their supplement insurance covered them. They learned the terrible truth after a serious stroke left them with a quarter of a million dollars in medical bills. Another couple we know just made a one day trip over the border into Canada to visit with friends. Several days later the medical expenses after a heart attack added up to almost $100,000 with no reimbursement from Medicare.

When booking a cruise one option is cruise insurance. Because many cruises involve international destinations these cruise policies provide medical cost reimbursement (up to specific amounts) and property theft and loss protection. Some also, but not all, cover the cost of medical repatriation. While cruise insurance is convenient you do have other options for insurance that could be less expensive and provides more coverage.

Airports often have outlets for inexpensive short term air travel insurance but it is mainly focused on the life insurance component and not on medical costs or trip interruption which is usually the airlines responsibility.

Specific Situational Considerations

Cruise Only Insurance – Say you are taking a Mediterranean cruise with flights into and out of the sailing port. A cruise insurance policy usually provides an appropriate amount of coverage for your cruise trip. Most cruise policies also cover medical expenses if you need care in a local clinic or hospital while a passenger on the cruise with some covering medical evacuation and repatriation. The same policy usually extends coverage while on booked cruise/land packages and the flights to and from the cruise port.

Cruise with an extended land itinerary – If you are taking that Mediterranean cruise but then plan to go off on your own for a couple of weeks in Europe, chances are that cruise policy will terminate on disembarking the ship. For that reason you need to understand that you will not be covered for medical emergencies above the international coverage and limits of your American health insurance policy which can often be zero. For retirees Medicare does NOT cover international medical care. If you opted for one of those no cost Medicare regional groups you have no international coverage.

Frequent InternationalTtravel – If you are a frequent international traveler it is most important to analyze your risk and how much you are comfortable paying for insurance. You have options of buying a complete medical plan (Geoblue) , a medical evacuation plan (EA+) or a complete annual insurance policy (Allianz, Amex) that offer some coverage in virtually all areas. One caution is that most annual policies only provide coverage while on trips of less than 60 days each.

In our case we take a number of cruises and international trips a year and our biggest concerns are medical emergencies and evacuation, so we keep an annual MedEvac plan in place. Our Medicare supplement insurance offers adequate (we hope) medical coverage for now and we will buy cruise policies on individual trips if it is a long and costly cruise.

Annual Travel Insurance Policies – There are complete annual travel policies, which should be considered if you travel internationally often. Generally they have lower limits of coverage, especially in areas like trip cancellation and property loss. For example, most annual policies limit cancellation protection to $2,000 per year. To the right is a recent annual generic quote provided by Alianz for a typical retired couple.

Special Note: 26 European countries require health insurance to visit.

In early 1995 twenty-six European countries signed an agreement that abolished enforcing their borders between member states. As a result the area mostly functions as a single country for international travel purposes, with a common visa policy. Anyone from a country that requires them to apply for the Schengen visa to enter Europe must provide proof of international health insurance. Americans and Canadians along with a number of other nationals do not need this visa to visit and therefore do not need to provide proof of insurance.

The 26 countries in the zone are Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland.

Technically a letter from your insurance company is required, and this needs to mention that you will be covered in Europe for any medical, evacuation and repatriation expenses during your whole stay. The medical expenses have to be covered for at least 30,000 Euros.

This post was prompted by a travel friend contacting me wanting to know what travel insurances we use. We compared notes and kicked around some scenarios and decided it was a good subject to explore in greater depth.

Also thanks to a visitor from Reviews.com  who directed us to their extensive article on buying travel insurance and if you have questions about specific recommendations I would highly recommend reading this article from Reviews.com HERE.

INSURANCE LESSONS FROM COVID-19

A number of recent travel articles about travel and insurance are now recommending “Cancel for Any Reason” Insurance but this may be a bad choice especially since most major cruise companies, in an effort to get bookings back, have offered last minute cancellations as part of their policy. In comparing “Cancel for Any Reason” insurance it seems that in many cases the premiums do not warrant the limited level of reimbursement so be sure and do the math before buying.

In addition most travel insurance policies will only reimburse you for canceling your cruise under specifically identified conditions. Most of those involve medical issues with you or immediate family. Some policies also provide for work related emergencies. Based on our experience with COVID-19 we now see a number of issues we hadn’t considered when looking at travel insurance.

Our Recent Experience Involving COVID

We were recently booked on a pair of cruises that went from Singapore to Rome with 14 ports of call and had paid in full (inside 90 days). As coronavirus issues began to appear our cruising companions cancelled early on and got full credit towards a future cruise. As things began to get worse we contacted the cruise line and they were no longer agreeing to issuing credits. 48 hours later they cancelled the cruise, gave refunds along with future cruise credits at 125%. After that we contacted our independent insurance carrier and were informed that they weren’t accepting claims involving coronavirus but might consider our air portion because our cruise was cancelled. After that we just contacted the airlines and got future credits to use within 12 months.

Insurance And Travel Advisories

It seems that under standard cancellation coverage, you cannot cancel due to travel advisories from the CDC, State Department or other government agencies. You can’t cancel because the cruise line changed the itinerary, or for fear of terrorism, or concerns about epidemics or natural disasters. Before booking a policy you should now investigate these issues for coverage.

CFAR Insurance

Because of these issues recent travel articles are suggesting that CFAR (cancel for any reason) policies are the answer. If you want the freedom to cancel your trip for any reason at all — and still get reimbursed for travel costs there are CFAR policies available. Looking into this option we’ve discovered many aren’t covering as much as theses articles suggest.

We have another 30 day cruise scheduled in the fall across the Pacific and around Japan so we decided to investigate CFAR policy costs for that itinerary. Our current standard policy covering that cruise cost us about $350. We received a CFAR quote from the same carrier that would reimburse our “deposits” only should we cancel for any reason for a premium of $1,500 but would not offer reimbursement the two weeks before the trip. That exceeds our currently paid deposits by almost $800 with questions about the actual costs, in full, being covered making this a bad deal.

If anyone finds CFAR insurance that makes more sense we’d love to hear about it.

Insurance Is Still Important

We still believe travel insurance should be an important part of your travel plan. Its benefits usually include trip interruption, emergency medical and emergency transportation, travel delay, lost luggage and more but we need to understand there are major exclusions like pandemics, natural disasters, insurrections and government actions.

You also need to understand that in order to file a claim you need to submit documentation. That can include proof of your property loss and its value like purchase receipts along with a police report of the incident. Health claims need doctor and hospital reports and bills.

The burden is on all of us travelers to educate ourselves on things like terrorism, tropical storms and disease outbreaks affecting our vacation destination. Also if you choose to buy standard coverage after an event becomes “known” even if you didn’t know about the situation, your benefits could be severely limited, making that travel insurance policy almost useless.

Because we frequently travel internationally our health insurance does have an international travel component that pays up to $50,000 for each of us with a lifetime cap of $50,000.

We carry an annual medical evacuation and repatriation policy that over the past number of years has seemed reasonably priced to us. The cost for the two of us has been less than $200 for the annual plan and offers $500,000 in coverage. It should be noted that this is not medical insurance and will not pay for doctors and hospitals except for expenses in getting you and your companion home. One of the largest is EA+ Emergency Assistance Plus

Juneau Alaska And A Fish Hatchery

It is the most popular fish on American menus and one of the most farmed fish in the world next to tilapia. Everyone’s familiar with the scenes of salmon running up streams and jumping waterfalls to return to the place they hatched in order to spawn. Though it varies among the five species of Pacific salmon, its life cycle, in its simplest form, is hatch, migrate, return, spawn, die.

Every year throughout the Summer these five species of salmon fill the rivers and streams of Alaska, returning to spawn and die. To take advantage of this abundance, fishing fleets have set to sea and nets have been set in rivers all over the world to catch these returning salmon. The biggest problem with these is that many fish are caught before they can spawn. Congress originally funded salmon hatcheries in the 1950’s in an effort to overcome the added problem created by hydro-electric dams preventing the salmon from returning upstream.

Macaulay Salmon Hatchery

These fish hatcheries were designed to capture and fertilize salmon eggs, raise the fry, release them from the hatchery to migrate where they will eventually return to start the cycle again. A system that is much more efficient than fish farming.

Today in Juneau, the Macaulay Salmon Hatchery collects, incubates, rears, and releases three species of Pacific salmon – chum, Chinook, and coho. At the Macaulay Hatchery, around one hundred thousand visitors a year watch an unforgettable and easily accessible miracle – the entire life cycle of salmon which includes five to ten million fish returning here to spawn.

In 2021 the Macaulay Salmon Hatchery reported that they released 135,000,000 Chum salmon, 1,250,000 Chinook salmon, 1,500,000 Coho salmon and 50,000 Rainbow trout into the wild.

The Visitor Center offers a unique number of attractions. In May through September, they’re open every day a cruise ship is in port. Spend time in the outdoor hatchery while a local guide shares with you the life cycle of Pacific salmon and the workings of this amazing hatchery. Inside, view salt water aquariums displaying over 150 species of marine life, including touch-tank aquariums. A truly remarkable experience for the whole family!

The Port of Grand Cayman

General – George Town, Grand Cayman is a major cruise destination for Western Caribbean cruises. It is a modern town famous for good duty free shopping and offering a number of good tour itineraries. The port requires tendering but the tender pier is right in the heart of town.

George Town with tender dock on the left

The biggest attractions in Grand Cayman are focused on the beaches and the clear turquoise water. The island is a major destination for sport divers and

Transportation – There are basically three ways to get around this island:

Bus System – Cayman actually has a pretty efficient bus system with fares starting at CI$2.50 (US$3.15). The central bus terminal is located in downtown George Town.

Taxis – Taxis are readily available but like most things in Cayman can be pricey.

Rental Cars – Cars are pretty easy to arrange but can be a bit expensive. Finding your way around is pretty easy, traffic is moderate but remember they drive on the left.

Money – The local currency is CI$ and is fixed at an exchange of US$1.25 to CI$1.00, so remember that everything is 20% more expensive than it seems. The US Dollar is usually welcome along with most credit cards with ATMs readily available.

Sting Ray City

Local Attractions – Beaches, beaches, beaches with the centerpiece being Seven Mile Beach with its resort hotels and restaurants. The island is also a scuba and snorkeling paradise with lots of coral reefs in shallow water for great snorkeling along with a great drop-off wall for scuba diving. Grand Cayman was the originator of the stingray tour called Sting Ray City where you can actually walk on a shallow sandbar and hand feed the stingrays.

George Town

Other attractions include swim with the dolphins at  Dolphin Discovery, The Cayman Turtle Center, Crystal Caves and visiting Hell a gift shop with famous post office where you can send home cards postmarked HELL.

The tender docking area

Grand Cayman is also famous for its duty free shopping with excellent buys from diamonds to watches to luxury housewares and fashion accessories. It is also home to one of the Caribbeans best rum cakes.

Reporting From Romania

We arrived in Bucharest Tuesday morning and did a quick trip around the city with a local guide. The first thing we learned is that currently there are over two million refugees from the Ukraine now in Romania, mostly women and their young children. As we drove around the city we saw several city parks with groups of mostly young women with children. We learned that most of them are Ukrainians who gather in the parks to network and feel connected to their community.

Romania is a country with less than twenty million residents that have mostly welcomed over two million Ukrainian refugees into their country. Most of these have been taken in to live with Romanian families. During the day the Ukrainian women gather in parks to be with other Ukrainians.While there are a few government programs that offer assistance to local families who take in Ukrainians, it is very little. The average income per Romanian worker is about the equivalent of US$1,000 per month. Right now the cost of living in Romania is very low which helps a lot. Beef costs about US$3 per pound and chicken about US$1.75 but the major issue currently involves gasoline that today sells for between 6 and 8 US Dollars per gallon.

Today I’m not so sure that Americans would be as generous but the United States has no collective experience of having to live under totalitarian Communism as did much of Eastern Europe.

Tuesday we took a drive south of Bucharest and were shown a new consequence of the war in Ukraini. Forty minutes outside of Bucharest we came upon long lines of semi-trucks lined up along the roads heading east. At the same time we also hundreds, if not thousands of semi trucks heading west. We were told that the lines of trucks were spending days lined up to get through Moldova and Southeast Romania into the Ukraine, mostly to pick up wheat and move it west to markets.

Russia has blocked access to the Black Sea and even though they claim to be opening routes to allow the export of wheat there doesn’t appear to be any reality to their claims. We’ve been informed that even if that were so trucks can nowhere move as much grain as is required.

Cruise And Venice, Italy – New Itineraries

One of the most popular cruise destinations on Mediterranean cruises has been Venice, Italy. For years there have been groups and organizations protesting what many claim could be serious damage to the buildings and canals of the water city caused by the large cruise ships. This has been countered by other groups that believe that the city receives substantial revenues from the cruise lines for dockage fees. Even after the results of two major studies found that the damage caused by frequent storms is a much more serious threat than cruise ships the United Nations and its World Heritage arm still threw their weight against the cruise ships. Unfortunately the controversy surrounding the docking of large cruise ships in Venice has now been settled – Cruise ships above certain sizes (about 90% of them) are now banned from entering Venice.

In response the cruise lines are setting up alternate ports that will still allow their passengers access to spend time in Venice and also provide other ports to replace Venice as a departure port. The two nearest ports with adequate docking potential are Ravenna and Trieste and for the time being the cruise lines seem to be selecting between the two. For example Royal Caribbean and Celebrity are focusing on Ravenna while NCL will be using Trieste.

Saint Mark’s Basilica

As you explore itineraries you’ll find a number of ships are staying overnight to allow plenty of time to visit Venice. Using buses Trieste is about a little over two hours to Venice (135 miles) with the Ravenna trip coming in between one and half to under two hours (105 miles). Another option that is also gaining traction is taking advantage of overnight hotel accommodations in Venice during your port stay.

If you are inclined to visit Venice on your own there are a number of affordable options to explore with bus service still topping the list:

Trieste to Venice

FlixBus operates a bus from Trieste to Venice that leaves every 4 hours. Tickets cost $12 to $15 (€10 – €13) and takes about 2 hours. Itabus also has service 5 times a day. By rail Trenitalia operates a train from Trieste Centrale to Venezia S. Lucia every hour. Tickets cost $12 to $24 (€10 – €21) depending on seat class and the trains take 2 hours and 5 minutes.

Ravenna to Venice

The best way to go to Venice from Ravenna is by bus, which costs about $10 (€9). The train to Venice, costs about $17 (€15) with trains about every hour. By bus or train the trip takes about 2 hours and 45 minutes to 3 hours with the bus being slightly faster but with less frequent service than the trains.

Better Cellphone Photography

Phone Photography Tips

Spend some time getting to know your cellphone’s photo app functions.

Use The Photo App Options

Most phone apps when opened start out in “photo auto” mode but there are additional options. They usually include features like “portrait” or “people” mode, “backlight” and “night scene” as a minimum. Each mode has a set of program features designed specifically to improve those sort of pictures. Beyond those there are usually a number of additional features you can explore.

Switching To Manual Mode

Your photo app probably has a feature called white balance which most of the time can be very useful. It is designed to detect an overall color cast in each scene and correct it to a neutral cast. There are shooting moments when this will actually change the character of the scene that attracted you to take the photograph in the moment. There’s a good likelihood that white balance will ruin that sunset photo. Because your phone is trying to balance out all the colors in order for it to look natural based on its program, sometimes it works against you. Many apps allow you to to turn off white balance or change the white balance setting to cloudy. The cloudy setting generally gives you a higher contrast and brighter color. Play around with your phones white balance settings to get more comfortable overriding those settings.

Enable The Grid Lines

Activating grid lines is an easy way to give you more guidance while taking a picture. It helps remind you about the rule-of-thirds (see more HERE). It’s also an excellent guide to let you see those perspective distortions in the scene and will guide you in changing the angle of the phone and that effect.

Get in the habit of using the grid lines on your phones screen to play around with the images composition.

Adjusting Exposure Most phones usually have a tendency to overexpose photos so play around with what overall light and dark options you have. Also while you are viewing the screen of you phone you can tap locations in the scene to tell the phone where you want the focus to be and to adjust for nominal exposure at that spot.

Reducing overall exposure is usually preferred to over-exposure. After treatment of your photo will usually allow you to lighten up dark areas but over exposed areas don’t darken much. Often there isn’t enough detail in over-exposed areas to be recovered because it’s too washed out.

Avoid Digital Zooming

Beyond the information in the image provided by the phones lens there isn’t any additional information that can be captured. Often simply enlarging the image after the picture is captured will produce the same result, and at times better results, than the phones digital zoom. There is also the issue with holding the phone steady when zoomed to avoid excess motion blur. That is a direct issue with high magnification that actually magnifies slight motion in the phone.

If your phone has an optical telephoto lens that allows you to zoom in without losing quality, your only concern is vibration and hand shake causing blur.

Macro Mode

Not all phone camera apps have a macro mode. Usually designated by a flower. Not only does this allow you to get really close to objects it also offers an opportunity to create some dramatic out-of-focus backgrounds. If you haven’t given this much thought give it a try and see what you can create. There’s no real cost in taking lots of digital images so spend some time playing around with your phone.

Also, if you don’t have a macro mode or a telephoto lens there are remarkably inexpensive attachment lenses you can buy that will greatly expand the photographic potential of your cellphone. CLICK HERE FOR EXAMPLES. Most kits spring clip the lenses to your phone and include macro lens, wide angle, fish eye and some have a telephoto lens.

Clean your lens

This may seem like a silly notion but often the biggest item reducing the quality of your pictures is that fingerprint or speck of dust on your cellphone lens. Take a moment to think about your past camera lenses and their size. Chances are they were over an inch in width (sometimes more than two inches). Now look at that lens on your cellphone – a quarter of an inch or less. The smaller the lens the bigger impact that dust has on the image. Keep your lens clean – big difference! Be sure and use lens cleaning wipes or alcohol and a soft, lintless cloth.

Changing Your Perspective

When we move around the world we don’t usually see it as a series of still visual frames. Our minds are always processing the environment and focusing our attention on areas we find interesting. What we are left with are experiences and not still pictures. It is that experience that often leaves us disappointed in the photographs we take. They often do a poor job of demonstrating what we saw and why we were fascinated by visuals of the moment. Understanding this is actually a big step toward taking better photographs. We need to stop being in the moment and start forcing ourselves to see the two dimensional screen and ask if it is saying anything about what attracted us to take the picture in the first place.

Upping your iPhone game

Don’t just accept the photo app that comes with your cellphone. There are a number of free or inexpensive apps that can actually help take your photography to the next level.

Controlling focus and exposure separately. The problem with accomplishing that trick is that the iPhone sets both exposure and focus with a single tap. If you tap on your foreground subject and it’s dark, you can end up over-exposing the photo. The easiest way to solve that problem, is to install a better camera app and there are a number available – these include Camera+ ($2) and Top Camera ($3). Using either of these apps, you can tap separately to focus and specify where to set the exposure. The end result: You no longer have to live with under- or over-exposed photos just because you chose to set a specific focus point.

There are also other apps that allow you to change an image after it’s taken. There’s FocusTwist that shoots a short video and then shows you a still photo derived from the length of video. There’s also AfterFocus ($1). Open a photo or take a one, and then outline the areas that you want to be in sharp focus. The app then blurs everything else for you, giving you a convincing shot with simulated depth of field.

Lock the focus without using an app on you iPhone. Instead of a tap to set only exposure you can lock the focus on the iPhone with a tap and hold on any spot on the screen for a few seconds when you see a yellow box flash around your finger. Remove your finger and you’ll see the message “AE/AF Lock” on the screen. Until you take the photo, the focus and exposure will remain the same till you tap the shutter release.

Apps for Android users.

Open Camera is a compact camera app for Android cellphones and tablets. It is free with no in-app ads. This Android app has different focus modes, scene modes, auto-stabilizer, HD video recording, handy remote controls, configurable volume keys, geotagging of photos and videos, support for an external microphone, HDR, dynamic range optimization mode, small file size, etc. and it’s open-source..

Google Camera comes installed on all Pixel devices but the Android community, has managed to make Google Camera app available on other Android devices. Making things like Pixel portrait mode, HDR+, and more plus the Pixel 4 camera’s Astrophotography feature, which enables users to capture great shots in the dark. GCAM apps are ported by third-party developers, so you may find lags and bugs in the download.

Adobe Photoshop Camera is good for taking a lot of selfies as the app comes with a ton of camera filters and effects. The filters can be applied before or after you shoot the picture, and some are remarkable and the app has intelligent AI that recognizes the subject in the picture and applies filters with real precision. It also has post-editing tools that change brightness, contrast, saturation and a magic wand tool that can remove sharp shadows and deep black areas. Unfortunately it does not allow for manual selection of shutter speed, exposure, focus, and is supported only on a few Android devices.