TRAVEL INSURANCE

The purpose of this section is to explain the advantages of travel insurance and suggest ways to find a good policy.  SCWDC offers weekend and week-long ski trips that cost anywhere from $500 to $4,000.  We want members to consider buying protection for life’s occasional serious problems. The role of SCWDC is to educate and inform skiers about travel insurance plans.

Travel insurance policies compensate for a variety of problems.  These can include:

1. Ski injury and medical costs
2. Evacuation
3. Trip delay
4. Lost or delayed baggage
5. Trip cancellation due conditions affecting the skier him/herself or the skiers’ family, including pre-existing medical conditions. (A detailed list of possible conditions is printed in a second document)

If you are a participant in one of the SCWDC European trips, please note that these trips always include tour operator-provided emergency medical and repatriation insurance.  But this is only partial travel insurance coverage.

PLEASE NOTE: Most travel insurance plans can be purchased up to the day before the trip departs.

However, if you want coverage for pre-existing conditions, it must be purchased within 10 to 15 days of your first payment to SCWDC – the EXACT period depends on the individual company. Therefore, if you, the individual skier, want coverage for pre-existing medical conditions pertaining to you or family members, you should immediately begin to investigate travel insurance plans upon making that first payment.

The premiums vary widely depending on the age of the traveler, the cost of the trip, and the kind of coverage purchased.  Plans range from the $50 level to $150 or so. A member needs to know what he/she wants beforehand to compare costs.  It can be complex.

In brief, we suggest there are three routes:

1. Your SCWDC trip leader may have travel insurance recommendations from the Tour Operator which is providing the travel services (airline, lodging) for your trip.  Ask your trip leader.
2. View the offerings of Travel Protectors of Leesburg, VA, which has relationships with several Blue Ridge Ski clubs and seems to stand ahead of most others for easy to understand and reasonably-priced travel plans.  Travel Protectors: http://www.travelprotectors.com/.  It has one section of Sports Travel listed on its web site.
3. Read this document to learn more about plans and your options which gives the web site of various travel insurance comparison sites or possibly do a search via a search engine for "Travel Insurance."

Note:  SCWDC wants to help all of its members and guests cope with the occassional difficulties of a "four/ six month-ahead" travel plan as well as the interruptions and sickness that may occur during a trip.  The content here is meant to assist our members find travel insurance at the lowest cost for the most benefits.