Voyageur Tours – Family Travel Blog

Why your family should consider travel insurance: a cautionary tale

When does it make sense to buy family travel insurance?

Vacation packages and cruises are often expensive, nonrefundable deals. If some crisis occurs, or you or someone in your family gets sick, you will often find it difficult or impossible to get your money back. A travel insurance policy can give you peace of mind before the expense of big-ticket vacations. Trip cancellation and interruption insurance can cover you in case of the unexpected.

I normally don’t mess with it because I’m an independent operator, not a package traveler, and it’s not usually worth buying it for a $300 Southwest Airlines plane ticket or a hotel room for a few nights. Right now, however, I am bemoaning the fact that I did not buy third party travel insurance (meaning it is sold by a company totally separate from whichever business you are paying for their tour package.)

My teen daughter was scheduled for a language-immersion high school school trip to France this summer. The tour company, Voyageur Tours, suddenly went bankrupt last week.It’s been a respected company since 1992, so this was a complete surprise.

The full story, featuring me as “the travel writer who was unfortunately bitten by lack of travel insurance,” is on the Austin-area NBC affiliate KXAN News Web site: Parents mad after bankrupt student tour.

I did not follow my own advice with my daughter’s trip; I’ve written that although many tour companies and cruise lines offer insurance, I recommend buying it from a separate, reputable company. It’s the “eggs in one basket” theory; if a tour company or cruise line or airline suddenly goes out of business, I don’t want to be insured through them and not only lose my vacation, but also my compensation for the lost vacation.

Travel insurance update: Voyageur Tours school trips bankruptcy

I wanted to follow up on my original post about the Voyageur Tours bankruptcy. It caused the cancellation of my teen daughter’s school trip to France this summer, and led me to take a hard look at travel insurance and then write this post:

Why your family should consider travel insurance: a cautionary tale

We’re still pretty much out of luck for getting most of our money back, which is why I should have bought third party travel insurance (NOT the insurance offered by the tour company itself, since it is worthless because of the bankruptcy) or family travel insurance.

A chunk of the trip fee, about $1600, was charged to our Chase Visa credit card, and after going through the “Dispute this charge” process on the account, we were told by a customer service representative today that the amount would be refunded to our account since the service charged was unsatisfactory.

It’s usually pretty easy to dispute charges on any card – log on to your credit card account online and look for a little flag or a link somewhere, with a phrase like “Dispute this charge,” then follow the instructions. Have a solid reason for disputing and be able to back it up.

One big drawback of debit cards (and I use mine all the time) is that they generally don’t have such simple or generous dispute methods. Sometimes, “cash on the barrelhead” is not the way to go.

Thanks, Chase, for helping salvage some of our financial loss.