Planning a special trip with your grandchildren can be one of the best lifetime experiences. With children, anything can happen. That’s why pre-planning and buying travel insurance is a smart move when you are planning to travel outside of your province or Canada.
You likely plan on purchasing travel insurance for yourself. Don’t assume that it will also cover your grandchildren.
When family members are traveling with you, what should your travel insurance cover? Here’s what you need to know.
Make sure you have Emergency Medical Travel Insurance
You need coverage for medical costs arising from sudden and unexpected situations (accidents and emergencies). Your government health insurance plan only covers a fraction of healthcare expenses incurred outside Canada, and only provides limited coverage. Without travel insurance, a medical emergency or trip interruption due to an emergency could be disruptive and leave you facing large unexpected expenses.
When you’re traveling with grandchildren out of your province, anything can happen, and you want to be prepared for any type of scenario you or the grandkids find yourselves in. Travel emergency medical coverage can pay for physician visits, prescription medicine and ambulance services wherever you are.
Purchase emergency medical travel coverage for every traveling member coming with you.
Here are some ways to save on your coverage:
Are you under age 60?
You can choose family coverage to save money. This coverage includes up to four parent(s), grandparent(s) and children or grandchildren. To be covered under your family plan, your grandchild must be:
- A minimum of 30 days old
- Unmarried
- Under the age of 21, or age 26 if they are a full-time student.
You will need your grandchildren’s date of birth to apply along with start and end dates for your trip
Are you over age 60?
You can’t cover the grandchildren under a family plan but you can get travel companion savings instead.
Is your entire trip within Canada?
You may be eligible for premiums that are half the cost you’d pay if you were outside Canada for the same length of time.
Get Trip Cancellation and Interruption insurance too
No matter how carefully you plan your trip, an emergency can throw everything off track. That’s what makes having trip cancellation and trip interruption travel insurance so important. These benefits can reimburse you for nonrefundable trip expenses if you must cancel or interrupt your trip due to a covered event, serious illness or injury of a family member (the injury, illness, or medical condition must be considered life threatening by a physician or require hospitalization).
If your grandchild, other travelling companion or you are hospitalized while you’re on your trip, trip interruption benefits may cover extra accommodation and transportation expenses up to limits set in your plan.
The plan you choose should provide for your grandchildren’s return trip home if you become sick. Your policy will have emergency assistance services to connect you to experts that will help with the logistics of emergency transportation services.
Or imagine you get news that a parent at home has a sudden, serious accident. Trip interruption benefits can reimburse you (up to your plan’s limits) for last-minute arrangements to get the grandchildren home quickly.
Find out more about what it and isn’t covered by Trip Interruption and Cancellation Insurance here.
More tips for travelling with grandchildren
Have an emergency plan
Before traveling, you should also have an emergency plan in place. Know in advance if your grandchild has allergies, takes prescription medicine or experiences other issues like motion sickness. Be sure to get instructions from parents on how to handle these situations.
Take proper paperwork
Having proper paperwork on hand is important. Make sure you have a document that consents to the travel and medical consent signed by the parents too so that you can make health care decisions on behalf of grandchildren in the parents’ or legal guardians’ absence. It’s important if an emergency happens. Here is information on recommended consent letters from the government of Canada.
Get ready for the trip of a lifetime and call us to get your travel insurance in place before you go!
The best thing about being a grandparent is that at the end of your wonderful trip you get to hand back your grandchildren to the parents safe and sound.
Call us today to get your travel insurance, or go online today to find out more and start your adventure!
