Many people rank Celebrity Cruises as one of the best cruise lines in the world. Their commitment to providing the highest caliber of customer service has helped them win numerous accolades throughout the years, including the 2020 Travvy Award for Best Premium Cruise Line.
Celebrity Cruise Lines works hard to preserve the environment and make the world a better place while simultaneously attempting to give its customers the greatest cruise experience possible.
Celebrities take great delight in providing opulent lodgings that allow you to “revel in elegant décor.” Experiences available on board include top-notch entertainment, modern spa and fitness facilities casinos and much more.
Celebrity, like a lot of other cruise lines in this day and age, has collaborated with internationally recognized chefs, which has enabled them to win the 2020 WAVE Award for Best Onboard Dining.
Celebrity makes an effort to cater to all tastes, with more than 300 places spread throughout all seven continents.
Celebrity Cruise Insurance Policy
1. Cancellation of Trip
Travelers’ biggest worry is trip cancellation. You might have to postpone your trip and incur costs if you get sick or are hurt accidentally before you leave. Because of this, trip cancellation is a really useful tool if you want to safeguard the cost of your holiday.
The trip cancellation benefit included in the celebrity cruise insurance policy is a non-insurance benefit, meaning that Celebrity Cruises, not an insurance company, provides the coverage and handles any claims. The following are the reasons their plans provide for cancellation:
- Unexpected illness, injury, or death of a family member or tourist.
- Uninhabitable residence due to fire, flood, natural calamity, or burglary
- Insolvency or default of the common carrier or travel vendor
- Cancel Due to Work Issues (traveler required to work during the trip)
- 250-mile or more transfer initiated by the employer
- Location rendered uninhabitable or inaccessible due to fire, flood, or other natural calamity
- Mechanical failure of a typical carrier
- A traveler was injured in an accident while leaving.
- Required departure
- Hurricanes
- proven identity theft of visas or passports
- Subpoena or jury duty.
If you must cancel for a covered cause, Celebrity CruiseCare Travel Protection will reimburse you in full; however, their Cancel For Any Reason policy only reimburses 90% in the form of future cruise credits, not in cash.
Furthermore, any travel plans you make outside of your cruise, like flights and transfers, are not covered by their protection plans.
Anywhere you book your travel, all of your plans are covered by the Trawick First Class policy and the Trawick First Class (CFAR 75 percent) policy. Also, they both provide a comprehensive list of covered causes, such as the necessity to cancel owing to contracting COVID-19, a 100% refund for covered trip cancellations, and a 15% refund for covered trip interruptions (more on this below).
2. Travel Interrupted
A circumstance that arises during your trip and prevents you from spending all or part of your holiday is called a trip interruption. Trip Cancellation and Trip Interruption cover in case something happens while you’re traveling.
The most frequent reasons for trip interruptions are traveler illness or injury. The trip interruption benefit in travel insurance reimburses the unused portion of your trip and also covers the expense for you to rejoin the trip in progress if you are unlucky enough to get sick or injured while on vacation and can continue traveling after receiving care.
Coverage for trip interruption also extends to the event of a family member’s untimely death or serious sickness. Trip Interruption also pays for the unused portion of the trip plus the additional expenses incurred by returning home early if your insured scenario necessitates it.
Trip Interruption benefits under the Celebrity CruiseCare Travel Protection insurance policy include up to 150 percent of the total trip costs if you must interrupt for a covered reason. That sum covers the additional expense of returning home as well as a refund for any unused travel expenses.
Plans such as the Trawick First Class give up to 150 percent of trip expenditures in case of interruption through travel insurance. As a result, they pay for up to 100% of the expenses that are not utilized, as well as an extra 50% to cover return home transportation expenses.
3. Refund for Any Reason
Refund for Any Reason If a cruise passenger has to cancel for any reason not listed in the policy schedule, cruise insurance offers them the maximum amount of flexibility and a return.
Ninety percent of the prepaid, non-refundable cancellation fees paid to Celebrity will be applied to future cruise credits if you need to cancel your voyage for a reason not specified in the celebrity cruise travel insurance policy.
Cruise credits, however, are non-refundable, non-transferable, and have a one-year expiration date. Recall that Celebrity offers this portion of the CruiseCare Travel Protection; their insurance coverage does not. Although a 90% CFAR cruise credit seems appealing, its value depends on your ability to utilize it. There is no expiration date on cash!
Alternatively, there is a 75 percent cash return for all prepaid, non-refundable trip charges (even those made outside of Celebrity Cruises) if you have travel insurance like Trawick First Class with Cancel For Any Reason. Travel, lodging, auto rentals, excursions and transfers may all fall under this category.
A Cancel For Any Reason policy must meet several requirements, as you might anticipate, but these are very simple to understand:
- Depending on the insurance you purchased, you have 10 to 21 days from the date of your initial payment or deposit to purchase the coverage.
- Make sure there are no limits or cancellation penalties applied to the full amount of the pre-paid trip expenses. If you haven’t finished booking your full trip, purchase travel insurance for the portions that you have already reserved within 10 to 21 days (depending on your policy) and add to it as you reserve more trips.
- Two days or more before the day of departure, you may cancel your trip.
4. Health Insurance for Urgent Care
Being adequately covered for medical expenses while traveling is one of the most crucial considerations when choosing trip insurance. Anything can happen at any time, usually when we least expect it to, such as an unexpected illness or unintentional injury.
You can be faced with sizable, unforeseen hospital expenses that you will have to pay out of pocket if you suffer a medical emergency while traveling and do not have adequate medical insurance coverage while abroad. A common misconception among Americans is that nations with universal health care will provide free emergency medical care to all of their inhabitants. Sadly, this isn’t the situation.
Rather than going to public hospitals, Americans receive medical care at private ones, and they have to pay the same costs as everyone else. In a private hospital, admission for inpatient care can cost between $3,000 and $4,000 per day. On top of that, you’ll also need to account for the expense of extra treatments, x-rays, surgeries, and specialists.
A frequent misperception is that hospital stays abroad will be covered by Medicare. Regretfully, it won’t. Outside of the US, medical providers are not covered by Medicare. Certain Medicare supplement plans do provide coverage for travel, but they only pay for emergencies and have a low lifetime cap or limited benefits.
Additionally, they may still demand that you cover 20% of the expenses. You might therefore have your ideal vacation and wind up with thousands of dollars’ worth of medical costs.
Cruise Insurance 101 recommends that foreign visitors obtain at least $100,000 in travel medical insurance for each passenger. We believe that $100,000 would cover all of your medical expenses in an emergency and shield your retirement funds from an enormous, unforeseen financial strain.
There is a $25,000 reward for medical insurance that would cover illness or injury with Celebrity CruiseCare Travel Protection. You can see right away that Trawick’s First Class insurance, which offers $150,000 in medical coverage per person, is far more appropriate for ensuring you obtain the care you need without accruing debt.
5. Emergency Medical Disturbance
Travel insurance is not the only aspect of a trip that can be costly. Using emergency medical evacuation, you are taken to the nearest hospital from the site of your injury or illness. Medical evacuation returns you home by commercial airplane or, if required, private medical jet after you’re stable enough for transport.
Up to $25,000 might be spent on a medical evacuation flight for every hour of flying duration. This is not covered by standard health insurance. Furthermore, US nationals are not eligible for medical care or aid in evacuation from the US State Department.
Travelers should carry at least $250,000 in Medical Evacuation coverage, according to Cruise Insurance 101, to make sure they have adequate insurance to return home from practically anywhere in the world in the case of a catastrophic medical emergency.
Medical Evacuation up to $50,000 per person is included with Celebrity CruiseCare Travel Protection. In comparison, both of the Trawick First Class insurance plans offer $1,000,000 for medical evacuation per person.
6. Pre-existing Medical Conditions
Pre-existing medical issues can be a major source of worry for elderly travelers. If you have had medical care, testing, medication adjustments, the addition of new medications, or a suggestion for a treatment or test that has not yet been carried out, you are said to have a pre-existing medical condition.
Pre-existing conditions are typically not covered by travel insurance policies unless you buy the policy within the necessary time frame after your original trip deposit date (called the Time Sensitive Period). If not, the insurer will check to see if there are any pre-existing medical issues they won’t cover by going back 60, 90, or even 180 days (depending on the policy) from the date you acquired the insurance. We refer to this as the Look Back Period. Any health issues that predate this Look Back Period that have not changed or stabilized
Pre-existing medical condition claims are often not covered by travel insurance policies if you have to postpone, cancel, or seek medical attention while abroad.
However, many policies provide a pre-existing condition waiver if you purchase the coverage within a few days of the date of your initial trip payment or deposit. Pre-existing Conditions are therefore covered, and there is no Look Back Period.
Furthermore, the majority of celebrity cruise travel insurance policy plans that include a pre-existing condition waiver do so at no extra expense. All you have to do to obtain additional protection is purchase the plan before the deadline.
CruiseCare Travel Protection covers pre-existing conditions, provided that:
- Within the time-sensitive period (14 days after the Initial Trip Payment), your payment for this plan will be received.
- You guarantee that all travel arrangements that are susceptible to cancellation penalties will be paid in full.
- When you pay for this plan, neither you nor the person with the pre-existing condition are prevented from traveling
- The total cost of the trip for each individual does not surpass $15,000. Within the Time Sensitive Period (14 days after the Initial Trip Payment), your payment for this plan is received.
- You guarantee that all travel arrangements that are susceptible to cancellation penalties will be paid in full.
- When you pay for this plan, neither you nor the person with the pre-existing condition are prevented from traveling, and
- The total cost of the trip for each individual does not surpass $15,000.
Pre-existing Medical Conditions are also covered by Trawick First Class insurance, and the same 14-day Time Sensitive Period is in effect. Furthermore, there is no trip cost cap under the Trawick policy.
Cost and Worth
We believe that the CruiseCare Travel Protection plans offered by Celebrity are more expensive and offer less coverage than other products on the larger travel insurance market. We believe that the $25,000 medical insurance coverage and the $50,000 medical evacuation coverage may not be sufficient in the event of a major illness or injury.
Regarding their cancellation policies, we believe they are fairly restrictive. Moreover, we find that adopting the Cancel For Any Reason option significantly raises the insurance premiums while providing future cruise credits that expire in just a year. In general, we think it provides little value for the money.
By comparison shopping, however, we discovered that the typical cost of Trawick First Class coverage is $354.20. It offers significantly better medical and evacuation benefits, a comprehensive list of cancellation reasons, a 100% reimbursement of travel expenses for covered cancellations, and a 15% reimbursement for covered trip interruptions.
There was no greater value to be gained by selecting the CruiseCare Travel Protection package with Cancel for Any Reason. They will undoubtedly cover 90% of the cost if you choose their Cancel For Any Reason option, but you will only receive a future cruise credit good for up to a year rather than a cash refund.
Once more, we discovered the Trawick First Class (CFAR 75 percent) policy for $602.14 by comparison shopping. It comes with a large sum of $1,000,000 for medical evacuation as well as $150,000 for medical insurance.
Furthermore, it has a Cancel For Any Reason clause that reimburses 75% of your travel expenses in cash rather than future cruise credit. At a lower cost, it offers considerably better coverage levels than Celebrity’s policy.
