Insurance FAQ

To all our Canadian & US clients, we can offer Emergency Medical insurance, Trip Cancellation and Interruption insurance as well as All-Inclusive insurance policies for your trip.

If you are neither a resident of Canada nor the United States and are travelling to Canada for your trip, we can offer you Medical Emergency insurance as well as Trip Cancellation and Interruption insurance.

If you are neither a resident of Canada nor the United States and your trip destination is outside of Canada, we recommend you consult a local insurance agent to assist you with your travel insurance needs.

We strongly recommend that you invest in travel medical insurance to cover emergency medical expenses during the tour. Knowing that you have Emergency Medical insurance, which can reimburse eligible medical costs in case of a medical or dental emergency, should give you peace of mind when seeking medical help during your tour.
We also recommend Trip Cancellation and Interruption insurance.

Travel insurance with trip cancellation and interruption benefits can reimburse you for non-refundable, pre-paid trip costs (up to the amount of your plan limits) should your participation in the trip be canceled or interrupted for a covered reason. All our Eagle-Eye tours are pre-paid tours. According to our cancellation policies, your payment to us will become non-refundable if you cancel your participation after the deadlines outlined in our policies.

In general, Trip Cancellation insurance reimburses you for non-refundable expenses if you are unable to join the tour. Trip Interruption reimburses you for the unused portion of your tour if you have to leave part-way through a tour and it also covers some additional unexpected expenses incurred during your travel (e.g. additional hotel of flight costs due to weather delays or other delays that are not covered by your airline).

Here’s an example for a Trip Cancellation insurance claim:
Let’s assume you break your ankle two days before you are supposed to depart on our trip to Costa Rica and you can no longer join the tour. Because you have cancelled less than 60 days prior to one of our land tours, your payment to us is 100% non-refundable. If you have Trip Cancellation insurance in place, you would then make a claim with your insurance provider to recover your financial loss.

Here’s an example of a Trip Interruption insurance claim:
Similar to the scenario above, you break your ankle half way through a tour and need to leave the tour. As per our policies, we cannot reimburse you for the unused portion of your tour and you would make a claim with your insurance provider to recover the unused portion of your tour (50% of what you paid for the tour).

You do not have to buy travel insurance right when you sign up for your trip, but you can get additional benefits if you do!

Buying travel insurance at the same time as signing up for your trip is especially beneficial when purchasing Trip Cancellation and Interruption insurance, because it gives you the opportunity to add an additional benefit called ‘Cancel for Any Reason’ to your policy (more on this in the next section). Essentially, this provides a partial refund if you have to cancel for a reason that is not covered by your insurance policy.

We work with many fantastic insurance suppliers and they all have different timeframes for purchasing this extra benefit, from 24 hours to 2 weeks.

If you think this is something you’d be interested in, please let us know immediately.

Please note that if you do add the ‘Cancel for Any Reason’ benefit to your policy, the same timeframe applies if you want to increase the amount of coverage insured.

If you are looking to buy Emergency Medical insurance for your trip, it is best to buy it when you are in good health and with no assumption that that may change.

We believe that the best practice for buying All-Inclusive or Trip Cancellation and Interruption policies, is to purchase the policy at the same time as submitting your booking. We would assume that your travel dates are your tour dates and estimate your trip cost as the tour price. Upon tour confirmation (typically between 120-90 days prior to our land tours) we can then adjust your travel days to cover your entire trip, in case you arrive early or stay longer after the tour. We can also increase the amount insured on your insurance policy to match your invoice, in case you have added additional hotel nights or other non-refundable expenses. In this way, your travel investment is appropriately insured throughout the booking process and a financial loss due to an unforeseen cancellation is minimized.

Sure, if you can think of something that may force you to cancel your trip and that something is not a covered reason listed in your policy you may want to purchase insurance with a ‘Cancel for Any Reason’ benefit.

Here are a few examples that we can think of:

• Your dog has fallen ill and you are not comfortable leaving him in someone else’s care. This is not a covered reason but may be a legitimate reason for you not to go, you may file a claim under you Cancel for Any Reason benefit and recover some of your pre-paid travel arrangements.
• You may change your mind about travelling more than 2 weeks prior to departure, even though we would not be able to refund your payment at that time, you could recover a portion of your payment through a claim under your Cancel for Any Reason benefit.
• If you are worried of being exposed to COVID-19 in your trip destination and therefore would like to cancel your participation in the tour. COVID-19 is currently considered a known event and is, therefore, not eligible as a covered reason under policies without a Cancel For any Reason benefit. You could, however, make a claim for the Cancel For any Reason benefit for a partial refund if it is included in your policy.

The ‘Cancel for Any Reason’ benefit is not a get out of jail for free card. It still comes with a significant financial loss on your end. If you cancel your trip 14 days or more before the departure date shown on your confirmation, your insurance provider will only pay up to 50% or 75% (depending on the policy) of the covered amount to reimburse your non-refundable payments.

Most insurance policies cover pre-existing conditions that are stable for a period of time prior to when the policy becomes effective. For Cancellation and Interruption insurance policies, pre-existing conditions would have to be stable prior to purchase of the policy. For Emergency Medical insurance policies, pre-existing conditions have to be stable prior to the start of your travels. The stability period is often 90 days, but varies depending on your personal situation. We can tell you more about the stability period that applies to you and please read your policy to understand what is and is not covered.

It depends. Generally, for Canadian clients, medical emergency insurance premiums may be refundable if your trip will not take place. However, Cancellation and All-Inclusive policies are usually non-refundable if you cancel your trip, as it’s assumed you may use the policy to recover non-refundable travel costs, provided your reason for cancellation is covered.

For Canadian clients: If Eagle-Eye Tours cancels the tour, resulting in a full refund or travel credit, you may also be eligible for a full refund of your insurance premium if your Cancellation or All-Inclusive policy is no longer needed.

For U.S. clients: U.S. travel insurance providers do not offer refundable premiums, including medical emergency coverage. If you purchase insurance before the tour is confirmed to secure the “Cancel for Any Reason” benefit and the tour does not run due to insufficient registrations, your premium will not be refunded. However, you may transfer your travel insurance coverage to a different trip.

This might be a great option for you! But do your due diligence and find out the details!

In most cases, you need to purchase your tour with your credit card to be eligible for the travel insurance offered through your credit card provider. Do your credit card insurance benefits include medical coverage for out of state/province as well as out of country? What are the terms for trip cancellation & interruption insurance? Some of our tours require a minimum medical evacuation coverage amount, does your credit card cover this amount?