If you're thinking of taking a tour on your next vacation, you're in good company. A recent survey of tour operators by the United States Tour Operators Association expects bookings will rise between 7% and 10% this year. That's a lot of tours worth an estimated $9.75 billion — and a lot that can go wrong. Fortunately, travel insurance is keeping up. Earlier this year, for example, Travelex Insurance Services teamed up with Collette Travel Service, a popular tour operator, to start selling...

Ask Laura Heidt if travel insurance is getting better, and her response is: And how! Heidt, the insurance desk manager for Brownell Travel, follows the ins and outs of travel insurance for her clients. And she says this summer has been a big one for insurance. "Many travel insurance policies now cover grandparents wanting to attend the birth of a grandchild," she says. "They cover normal pregnancies — there do not have to be complications. And school extensions are also covered if the...

Peter M. Zollman doesn't stop traveling. In the last few months, he's been to Berlin, Lisbon, New York, Las Vegas, and visited Utah's famous national parks. But lately, he's started to wonder if an annual travel insurance policy might be right for him. An annual (also called a multi-trip) policy covers all of your trips for an entire year. "What's the coverage like?" asks Zollman, a marketing consultant based in Orlando. "And what are the pitfalls of annual insurance?" Actually, annual travel...

With a $60,000 price tag for a family birthday trip to the Mayan Riviera, LaDell Carter knew she couldn't recommend just any travel insurance to his client. The custom itinerary featured accommodations in five-star hotels with spa treatments, gourmet meals prepared by a private chef, and plenty of time on Mexico's white sand beaches. Carter, the founder and lead travel designer at Royal Expression Travels, had done his research, so when the time came to recommend a travel insurance policy,...

Travel insurance companies are coming to the realization that their customers don't know much about travel insurance, if they know anything at all. And they're quietly setting out to change that. How much don't travelers know? Consider what happened to Harry White. Before he left for a trip to Denmark, he decided to skip purchasing health insurance because he'd heard that healthcare is free in Europe. "So, I thought, why bother getting medical coverage, right?" says White, who runs a sports...