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If you’re on vacation and get in an accident or become seriously ill, what’s your plan? If you don’t have an answer, it’s time to put one together. Depending on where you’re going, how long you’ll be gone and your current health status, the plan could be as simple as “jot down the address of the nearest U.S. embassy and call it a day.”
But for many travelers, it helps to have a more robust plan that includes some amount of travel insurance and potentially an emergency assistance membership to ensure you can get the care you need without decimating your finances.
Take a look at some of the most common travel emergencies and their costs. Then, find out what you can do to protect yourself and your wallet from those surprise expenses.
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The costs of a travel emergency add up quickly
When you picture a travel emergency, you might consider a canceled flight or lost luggage. But more serious emergencies can and do happen. Maybe you’re taking a cruise and suffer a pickleball injury that lands you in the cruise ship hospital with a broken ankle. Now, you’re stuck trying to coordinate transport to a hospital on land and, ultimately, a flight back home to have your ankle treated by an in-network health care provider.
Maybe you’re on a cross-country RV road trip, crossing as many of America’s most iconic national parks off your list as you can. While deep in the wilderness, you suddenly start feeling ill. At the nearest hospital, you’re diagnosed with a serious illness that requires a multi-day hospital stay or medical transfer back to a hospital in your hometown. Now, you have to coordinate how to get your RV out of that national park and back to your house while you’re in the hospital.
Without enough preparation, you could easily end up spending thousands in unexpected expenses after an accident or illness like this. If that number seems unlikely, here are some estimates of expenses that you might end up paying in a travel emergency:
- Having your car or RV shipped back home while you’re in the hospital: $500 to $2,000 or more, depending on RV size, distance and other factors.
- Medical evacuation: $25,000 to $100,000 (according to John Hopkins Medicine).
- Replacement of a lost or stolen passport: $225 (according to U.S. Department of State).
- Last-minute flight booking to get to a different hospital or back home: Hundreds or more, depending on where you’re flying from and to, as well as how many traveling companions are flying with you.
- Last-minute hotel stay extension for your traveling companion: $159 per night (according to J.D Power).
Won’t travel insurance cover me in these travel emergencies?
To a certain extent, yes, travel insurance will cover you in travel emergencies. Depending on the coverage you have, a good travel medical insurance policy can cover the costs of treatment while you are overseas. For domestic trips, your own health insurance may be enough even while out of state.
But these policies typically exclude a lot of related expenses, such as medical evacuations, last-minute flights or extended hotel stays. Travel medical insurance will pay your hospital bills for covered injuries or illnesses, but insurance typically won’t cover the transport to get you to that hospital or help coordinate your transfer to a different hospital if you need care that you can’t get at your current location.
It also typically won’t help with other logistics like getting you home if you need to cut your trip short or getting your passport and other documents replaced if they were lost during the emergency.
One way to tackle travel emergencies
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Emergency membership services are one option to cover those gaps. These are flat-rate annual membership plans that provide an extra layer of protection separate from your insurance policy. For a fixed rate, you get financial and logistical support in an emergency. That typically includes things like medical evacuations, lost document replacement or transport to a hospital equipped to provide the specific care you need if your current hospital can’t.
An emergency membership service, like Emergency Assistance Plus, Global Rescue or Medjet Assist, is not a replacement for travel insurance, but an add-on layer of protection.
Most plans, regardless of provider, will cover the costs and handle the logistics of coordinating medical evacuations and hospital transfers. Some, like Global Rescue, may also include first responder services, picking you up from the site of injury. However, most memberships don’t kick in until you’re admitted to a hospital, meaning you’d have to contact local first responders in an emergency to get yourself to the nearest hospital. But once you’re there, your emergency service can take over.
As an example, here’s what members get with an Emergency Assistance Plus essential plan, which costs $249 for a single traveler or $309 for a family:
- Emergency medical evacuation
- Transportation home for you and one companion
- Transportation for a caretaker to join you if you were traveling alone
- Transportation of minor children and grandchildren
- RV or vehicle return
- Return of remains
For services that are covered, the costs are paid up front by the emergency service, so you don’t have to deal with the hassle of trying to get reimbursed. Members also get other assistance like translation services, prescription replacement, lost luggage assistance and more.
Membership is active for a full year, so you have coverage for every trip you take within that period.
What to consider before getting an emergency assistance membership
While emergency memberships can be an important layer of protection, it’s just as important to understand what they can and can’t do. Here are some important considerations to keep in mind as you shop around for a membership that fits your travel plans:
- Emergency membership services are not insurance. Namely, they won’t cover the cost of the actual medical treatment you need. These memberships are there to cover all the extra costs and logistics surrounding that care.
- Membership benefits typically kick in after hospitalization. If you get injured while hiking Kilimanjaro, don’t call your emergency membership service from the side of the mountain. Call the local first responders. Once you’ve been admitted to the nearest hospital, that’s when you call your membership service to handle the rest.
- Care and transportation must be coordinated by the service. While you usually have to rely on local first responders to get yourself to the hospital initially, all care and transportation after you’ve been admitted must be coordinated by the service. They typically won’t reimburse you after the fact for care and transport you coordinate yourself.
- Read the fine print before joining for any exclusions. Many plans will come with exclusions that could leave you ineligible for services in some situations. Some common exclusions include people who are traveling against the advice of their doctor, participating in certain high-risk activities or traveling to one of the 21 countries on the Level 4 “Do Not Travel” list. Hiking Kilimanjaro might be fine. But paragliding off the peak might be excluded. Having a pre-existing condition might be fine. But traveling when your doctor told you that doing so would be risky could result in denial of service.
Who should (and shouldn’t) get additional travel emergency services
Additional emergency protection purchases aren’t necessary for every trip or every traveler. In general, those most likely to benefit from this added layer of protection include:
- Retirees who go on longer or more frequent vacations
- RV travelers or international snowbirds
- Anyone going on a cruise
- Anyone traveling to a remote or rural destination where access to care may be limited.
- Anyone participating in higher-risk activities like hiking, scuba diving or cross-country skiing (but not high-risk activities that emergency plans exclude).
However, if you don’t travel often or tend to stick to destinations where you’re never too far from a hospital, you’re probably fine to stick with just travel insurance.
You should also skip an emergency membership service if any of the exclusions apply to you. Traveling to a remote destination to go bungee jumping or spelunking, for example, might seem like the kind of risky scenario when the added protection would come in handy. But those activities are often excluded.
Other ways to prep for emergencies on vacation
Travel insurance and an emergency membership service aren’t the only ways to be proactive about travel emergencies.
Here are some other steps to take ahead of your next trip:
- Contact your health insurance provider to find what, if any, coverage they provide for international travel. That way, you can tailor any travel insurance you buy to just covering the gaps your existing policy has.
- Leave a copy of your itinerary (including dates, locations and contact information) with a friend or family member. This will make it easier for them to assist you from back home in an emergency.
- If you have any pre-existing conditions, get a letter from your doctor describing the condition(s) and any prescription medicines (including their generic names) you’re using. If possible, have this letter translated into the local language of the country you’re visiting. This can help health care providers overseas quickly diagnose problems and better avoid any treatments or drugs that might negatively interact with your existing medications.
- Make sure you’ve listed an emergency contact with up-to-date contact information on the information page inside your passport.
- Write down the address and telephone number of the U.S. embassy or consulate closest to where you’re staying. For cruises or international road trips, do this for each stop along your route. The U.S. embassy or consulate can help with much of the coordination and logistics that paid emergency memberships offer. The key difference is that the embassy won’t pay for any of the costs.
- Check the Department of State’s travel guidance for your destination and pay particular attention to the health section. This will give you a sense of what kind of health care access will be available and how difficult it would be to get treatment in an emergency. You can find this travel guidance page by either clicking on the country you’re visiting on the State Department’s travel advisory map or scrolling toward the bottom of the same page and picking the country from the dropdown menu under “Learn about your destination.”
- If you need medical care abroad, keep track of all receipts and invoices because you will likely need to file the claim with your travel insurance yourself. Make sure you get detailed, itemized records of the treatment received.
Above all, don’t let the fear of emergencies or the costs of dealing with them keep you from traveling. With a little planning and preparation ahead of each trip, you can minimize the risk of something going wrong and have a solid plan for dealing with any unexpected problems.
