7 Cruise Disasters Travel Insurance Can Save You From (Number 3 Happened to Me)

This post may contain affiliate links, marked with a *. This post is sponsored by Compare Your Cruise Insurance. All thoughts and opinions and my own.

Going on a cruise isn’t like going on most land based holidays, you’ll be out at sea miles from land, and if something bad does happen, it can be much worse and much harder to fix. Because of that regular travel insurance policies do not normally cover cruises.

You need cruise specific insurance for a cruise and should never cruise without it. I don’t mean to scare you, but there have been cases where passengers couldn’t access the treatment they needed because of the costs of not having insurance. It’s important to get this right.

If you’re cruising from the UK, I always recommend checking cruise policies using Compare Your Cruise Insurance*. It shows cruise specific policies side by side in a table so you can quickly see which covers things like medical evacuation, missed ports and cancellation.

Takes less than one minute and shows you only cruise specific policies.

It certainly isn’t the case that the most expensive policy is always the best.

This is why I find cruise comparison sites really helpful. You only have to put in your details once and you can see each policy side by side. You can compare what is included and which ones fit your needs.

A few benefits of using a site like Compare Your Cruise Insurance are that:

• They only show policies that cover cruises, theres no risk you’ll pick one that doesn’t
• You can see the medical cover limits across different insurers. Some cruise lines (like P&O) require a specific amount
• Extras like missed port cover are easy to see
• You can compare the cover for things like cancellations
• You only need to enter your information once, it’ll do the rest

1. Emergency Medical Evacuation From A Cruise Ship

I’ve been on multiple cruises where guests have been medically evacuated by helicopter. This most recently happened on a Fred Olsen cruise which I took a few months ago.

Cruise ships do have small hospitals onboard but they really are just designed to keep you stable and to fix up things like broken legs or cuts. They don’t have the equipment that you’ll find on land.

On 1 in 7 of the cruises I’ve taken, we’ve had a medical emergency. It’s not rare at all. Air ambulance evacuations can easily exceed £100,000.

Being airlifted from a cruise ship can cost tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds. It doesn’t matter if you are from a country like the UK where the medical care is free to access, if you need to be taken off a cruise ship on a helicopter, you’ll be billed for it afterwards.

A user on Cruise Critic said:

He got evac’d to FLL the next day by AirEvac at a cost of 23K. Had to argue with AON because they tried to tell me we only had $25k coverage – but I had read policy that said $50K.

This is why it’s worth comparing evacuation limits before you buy a policy. Compare Your Cruise Insurance lets you see these limits instantly. You can also open the full policy wording before buying, which is something I always recommend doing.

You can compare evacuation cover from multiple insurers here:
Check Cruise Insurance Options

2. Missing The Ship After A Delayed Flight

Picture the scene, you’re waiting to board your flight for a cruise and are told it’s cancelled. There are no flights you can rebook on that’ll get you to the ship in time.

Hopefully you’ve used a good travel agent who can get you to the next port but travel insurance is really important here.

You can see below that some policies have a really small amount of coverage for this, but more expensive ones do have more.

Missed departure
Policy A – £300
Policy B – £1,000

This is exactly why comparison sites are useful. You can instantly see where a policy looks cheap but actually has much lower cover.

You can see above that one has £300 missed departure and the other policy £1000. Compare Your Cruise Insurance will also show you if there is an upgrade available for policy type.

When you find an insurer you’d like, sometimes they still have different levels of cover, often called something like Bronze, Silver, Gold.

3. Cancelling Your Cruise Before Departure

Usually when you book a cruise you’ll book it far in advance. Perhaps something comes up that means that you can’t go anymore, a family member is ill or a pet dies for example.

My cat Hudson recently passed away and having insurance saved me £1400. It was a horrible time and I miss him a lot, but I am so grateful that I had insurance.

Some cruise lines might let you move the dates of your cruise depending on how far away it is, but it really depends. Some don’t at all.

Before picking any particular insurance policy you will be able to see on Compare Your Cruise Insurance the full policy document for that insurer. You can see below that this policy would cover you if you had to do Jury Service.

4. Medical Treatment Onboard

Medical care on cruise ships is INCREDIBLY expensive. Below is a photo I took a few years ago of the cost of various scans on an MSC cruise. CPR costs €250!!

Travel insurance usually covers all of this, as long as you have disclosed to them if you have any pre-existing conditions. If anything changes, you must let them know.

With medical cover like this, it is worth checking what the excess of your policy is. If you buy a cheaper policy you’ll usually have to pay more each time you use it. If you have a policy with a £300 excess then it wouldn’t be worth claiming for anything below that amount.

5. Being Confined To Your Cabin

One of the smallest benefits that people often forget is cabin confinement. This means that if you have to stay in your cabin because you are ill, you might be able to get a lump sum.

Of course, nobody wants to be ill during a cruise, but if you do end up being ill, you might as well make some money from it!

The confinement does have to be confirmed by the cruise line/medical team, you can’t just say you felt unwell so didn’t go out a certain day.

6. Lost Or Delayed Luggage

If you are going on a regular land holiday and your luggage is delayed, it isn’t a big deal, you just wait for it. If you are going on a cruise though, your suitcase might not make it until you have sailed off to another country.

In this situation it’s really important to have a good amount of baggage cover.

My bag was lost once when I came back from a cruise with my Dad. Amazingly his suitcase made it back home, but mine took another day! We checked in at the same time so that one did confuse me. Anyway, it wasn’t a big deal because I was coming home, if I was going on the cruise, that would have been more difficult.

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7. Leaving The Cruise Early / Cruise Interruption

Thankfully, this one hasn’t happened to me but it has happened to friends of mine and I interviewed Rebecca about her story below:

Leaving a Cruise in an Emergency – What Happens Next? (PASSENGER INTERVIEW and Advice)

It isn’t uncommon for people to have to come home from a cruise early. Usually because of an ill family member or a problem with their home like a flood or a fire.

It may be that your cruise needs to be interrupted too, perhaps you need medical care on land and you miss the ship, you need them to get to the next port. There are so many possibilities, and it’s really clear using the comparison site below that not all policies cover this:

What to Do Next?

Before you book or take your cruise, it’s worth spending two minutes just checking the policies on Compare Your Cruise Insurance. You can instantly see which policies cover cruise specific problems like evacuation, missed ports and cancellation. Check the below to make sure that none of the above catches you out:

• Does the policy have enough medical cover for the cruise line you’re travelling with?
• Does it include missed port cover or cabin confinement?
• What is the excess?

If you don’t need a new policy yet, maybe you already have an annual policy, make sure that you bookmark and save this link so that you can use the comparison next time.