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Health and travel insurance in Australia/Asia

electrofelix · 2013-01-04 22:34:00

I'm currently looking at planning a trip later this year, with my girl friend, that will involve travelling around Australia on a working visa for ~8 months followed by 3-4 months in South East Asia. Looking at health and travel insurance, I'm finding it a bit difficult to find reasonable cover that includes doing martial…

04-01-2013 11:34pm

#1

electrofelix

Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 273 ✭✭

Join Date: July 2003

Posts: 222

I'm currently looking at planning a trip later this year, with my girl friend, that will involve travelling around Australia on a working visa for ~8 months followed by 3-4 months in South East Asia.

Looking at health and travel insurance, I'm finding it a bit difficult to find reasonable cover that includes doing martial arts training, which I'd like to continue if possible while in Australia, and covers cancellation of parts of the trip due to insolvency of operator.

For flights in general, I'm assuming you can claim back compensation through the governments due to the bonds that are logged with the various governments/civil aviation authorities.

So my main concern around insolvency will be that the travel around South East Asia will be partly made up of an trip will be via a tour operator. I don't believe overland tour operators are subject to the same requirements, so if they go bust, there is no-one to claim against.

Seems a number of travel insurances contain the clause that states the insurance company is not liable for any failure on the part of the operator to fulfil any part of the service due to insolvency.

The VHI global health + travel insurance is the closest so far, but lacks any cover for insolvency or martial arts, although I've submitted a query to see if there is any flexibility around getting them to quote me on what cover for those additional items would be. Cover without these 2 items, works out to be €2400, or €3336 for two people for the 12 months.

Accident & General travel insurance seems to be good cover wise, but bit pricey just for travel insurance and appears that it would still require a separate global health insurance.

Most other international health insurances seem to be off the chart by comparison i.e. €5000+ for two people just for health, never mind adding travel cover as well. Which does make me wonder if there are any serious gaps in the VHI cover.

What have other people's experience been?
Anyone ever needed the insolvency cover? I'm beginning to hope that at most only the deposit will need to be put at risk for the travel around Asia until closer to the time.

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