Protect your vacation investment

Hundreds of thousands of travelers have been stranded for nearly a week as the volcanic eruption in Iceland causes the biggest disruption in airline service since the events of Sept. 11.

While many of those travelers have been forced to survive "on their own" and spend money out of their own pocket on extra hotel nights and meals in pricey European cities, those who protected their trips with an inexpensive travel insurance policy are faring much better.

Most travel insurance policies provide coverage for "trip interruption" and "trip delay," when events cause your trip to be interrupted or delayed for a certain amount of time.

Harmony Travel offers travel insurance from several vendors, and we typically base our recommendation to travelers on factors such as client age, length and "difficulty" of travel, travel region, amount and types of coverage provided, and more.

As a rule of thumb, the typical travel policy costs about 1/10 of the total trip cost, however, this could be lower or higher depending on the vendor and the coverage limits.

Here are some of the benefits from one of our preferred providers:

Trip Cancellation - get all of your money back if you cancel for a covered reason
(You can also purchase "Cancel For Any Reason" insurance for a bit more)

Trip Interruption - if you have to cut your trip short; benefit up to 150% of trip cost

Trip Delay - this policy pays $150 per day

Medical Expense/Emergency Evacuation - this could be as simple as falling and breaking an ankle while on a tour or as serious as suffering a heart attack while out of the country. Coverage amounts vary widely.

Baggage Loss and Delay

The policy we sell most covers unexpected situations like job loss, hurricanes, illnesses to you or family members and more. You're even covered if you have an accident on the way to the airport. We are always happy to provide a complete description of benefits in advance so you can see what is and what is not covered by the policy.

None of us expect to have to cancel our long-awaited vacations or to have a volcanic eruption, hurricane or earthquake interrupt or travel, but unfortunately the unexpected does happen.

Next time you're planning a trip, please consider the small cost of travel insurance to protect your bigger investment.