Alaska - Travel Insurance Advice
 

Doing 3 weeks on our own (no cruise) taking in all the advice from fellow fodorites. Can any one speak to the topic of travel insurance, since Alaska's tourist season is so limited and most lodges/activities require full payment well in advance. For example, Brooks and Denali lodging post their cancellation policies and refund timeline and suggest getting travel insurance. Can anyone recommend a company that they have used? And thank you to all the Alaska Trip Reports and ongoing communication to help us all plan our dream trips to Alaska - so much more information we'd ever find in books!! We were ready to book this trip two years ago, however, illness in the family put a halt to our plans. Thanks for any help, it is truly appreciated.

I buy travel insurance when the non refundable reservation fees are a significant amount of money. I also like the trip interruption insurance that is included. We buy through TravelGuard. There are several packages. Just buy the one that includes what you need covered. You don't need to be over insured. You can compare insurance policies on www.insuremytrip.com.

Hello riccar, most Fodorites find the website: www.insuremytrip.com to be a good source of information. There you will find if not all most of the various insurance companies and what they offer or exclude with the various policies.

Wishing you a wonderful time in beautiful Alaska, I am sure you will doubly enjoy it since you found it necessary to cancel two years ago.

If you can lose your money and not wince, don't bother with insurance. But if you would be bothered by the loss [and I WOULD BE] get the insurance. It is really a small cost compared to the cost of your trip. We used squaremouth.com
for our trip to Europe this past spring.

We use TravelGuard. So far we have not needed to use it, but we have chosen it based upon others personal situations and how they handled them. Our DS spent the summer in a very remote area of Alaska (no guides, no lodges...truly living off the land) so we were sure to get trip insurance for him and due to what he was doing, we had to be sure that what we bought was applicable and it was.

For Alaska I'd recommend travel insurance if you are flying in a small plane somewhere (like to a remote bear viewing camp) and there's a fairly good chance you might not be able to fly due to weather. Lot of those places are non-refundable.

I've been stuck in Homer for 3 days waiting for a storm to clear so we could fly to a Katmai bear camp, as an example. Cost was roughly $1,000/day for 2 and non-refundable, and the guide said they couldn't fly 25-50% of the time, so here's where you might want insurance.

If you are driving or arriving by boat or taking the train somewhere I wouldn't bother with travel insurance as there's not a great chance you won't arrive on time, unless you are worried about health issues or something similar.

<b>Can anyone recommend a company that they have used? </b>

Usually the companies (like bear flight seeing trips) have a list of travel insurance companies they work with and that they recommend.

<b>"For example, Brooks and Denali lodging post their cancellation policies and refund timeline and suggest getting travel insurance."</b>

This is a good example ... no reason to get travel insurance for Denali lodges, even the remote ones near Kantishna, since you can drive or take the train to the entrance and even if you miss the lodge's bus in you can take the park bus the next day to Kantishna worse case. We've been to Camp Denali and North Face Lodge several times and none of the guests missed the connections, for example.

But you'll have to fly in a small plane to a Brooks Lodge (either Brooks mountain range north of Fairbanks or Brooks Lodge in Katmai sw of Anchorage, not sure which you mean), so maybe consider flight insurance for just those days. Though I must say we've been to Brooks (Katmai) four times and never had a long delay, usually just a few hours each time, flying in from Anchorage and King Salmon.

<b>"... illness in the family put a halt to our plans." </b>

If you think this is likely to reoccur then that's another situation where you should probably get trip insurance.

Thanks everybody - all the information will help us proceed with making reservations. And yes, Bill, you are correct, we are keeping mind the "what if's..." 2 yrs ago, quit my job to take care of my mom, who lost her battle with cancer. And currently I am laid up in a cast after coming down the stairs the wrong way, ankle rolled under, crack-pop and the rest is history - small ankle fracture and torn ligament - never saw it coming !! Alaska, here we come !!