Michelle Bailey | Travel
Two summers ago I clicked “yes, add protection” on a flight to Lisbon without reading a word, paid $87 for it, and later discovered my credit card already covered almost everything the policy did. The thing I actually needed, coverage if I got hurt abroad, wasn’t in it at all. So if you’re asking whether travel insurance is worth it for your summer trip, my answer is yes, but probably not the policy you were about to buy. Insure what you’d actually lose and what could actually ruin you, and skip paying a percentage on everything else.
Summer trips are pricier, and people are insuring them earlier
Squaremouth, the travel insurance comparison site, released its summer 2026 outlook last week, and the numbers explain why so many of us are suddenly thinking about this. The average trip cost among its customers jumped 24% from last summer, from $7,794 to $9,668. Italy, Canada, France, Spain, and Mexico are among the top destinations for June and July, right behind trips within the U.S.
Travelers are also buying sooner. The average gap between paying a trip deposit and buying insurance fell from 71 days to 62, and purchases of Cancel For Any Reason coverage nearly doubled, from 6.9% of policies to 13.5%. When a trip costs close to ten grand, people get nervous about losing it, which is fair. The question is which part of that ten grand is really at risk.
Most travel insurance is priced on the wrong number
Comprehensive travel insurance is usually priced as a share of your total trip cost. According to InsureMyTrip, most policies run 4% to 10% of the trip price. I’ll use 6%, near the middle of that range, for the math below. Adding Cancel For Any Reason coverage raises the premium by roughly 40% to 60%.
Here’s the gap I don’t see in most “is travel insurance worth it” articles. The trip cost you enter should be what you’d lose if you canceled, and on a modern trip that’s often far less than what you’ll spend. Refundable hotel rates, free cancellation on rental cars, and restaurant money you haven’t spent yet are not at risk. If you insure the full $9,668, you’re paying a premium on dinners that were never in danger.
Do the math on what’s actually nonrefundable
Take a summer trip for two to Italy that lands near Squaremouth’s average. Say it adds up to $9,668: $1,800 in nonrefundable flights, $1,200 in prepaid nonrefundable hotel nights in Florence, a cooking class and a museum pass that can’t be refunded, and the rest in refundable hotels, trains you’ll book as you go, food, and shopping.
If you insure the whole thing at 6%, that’s $9,668 times 0.06, or about $580. Now total only the nonrefundable pieces: $1,800 plus $1,200 is $3,000, and say the class and passes bring it to $3,300. At the same 6%, that’s $198. You’d save about $382 and still be covered for every dollar you could actually lose.
Then check what you already have. Plenty of travel credit cards include trip cancellation and interruption coverage when you pay with the card. Chase’s Sapphire Preferred, which carries a $95 annual fee, covers trip cancellation and interruption up to $10,000 per traveler, plus trip delay reimbursement. If your flights and prepaid hotel are on a card like that, your cancellation risk may already be handled, and the $198 drops toward zero. Read your card’s guide to benefits for the covered reasons, because cancellations only count for listed events like illness or severe weather, not a change of heart.
The risk that can bankrupt you is medical, not your nonrefundable hotel
This is the part I got wrong in Lisbon. Losing $3,000 would hurt. A medical emergency abroad could cost far more. Cedars-Sinai’s guide for Americans traveling abroad notes that many U.S. health insurers pay only “customary and reasonable” hospital costs overseas, very few cover a medical return home, and Medicare generally doesn’t cover care outside the U.S. A medical evacuation can cost $25,000 or more, and sometimes over $100,000.
A lot of credit card protections don’t help much here, either. Trip cancellation coverage reimburses prepaid travel. It doesn’t pay a hospital in Rome. So before you buy anything, call your health insurer and ask two questions: do you cover emergency care in the country I’m visiting, and do you cover medical evacuation back to the U.S.? If the answer to either is no, that’s the coverage I’d prioritize this summer.
Travel medical coverage is the part I’d buy first
Travel medical plans, sometimes sold as medical-only or with evacuation as the main benefit, are built for exactly this gap. Because they aren’t priced as a percentage of your trip cost, they don’t get more expensive just because your trip did. When you compare plans, look at the emergency medical limit, the evacuation limit, whether the plan pays the hospital directly or reimburses you, and whether any preexisting condition rules apply to you.
If you’re also nervous about cancellation, that’s when a comprehensive policy on the nonrefundable amount makes sense. Just make sure the trip cost you enter is the $3,300 you’d lose, not the $9,668 you’ll spend.
When travel insurance is worth it, and when it isn’t
My rule now is simple. For a domestic road trip with refundable bookings and my regular health insurance, I don’t buy anything. For an international trip, I buy travel medical coverage, every time, even if I have nothing else. For a big trip with a lot of nonrefundable money, I add cancellation coverage on that amount, unless my card already covers it.
Before you go, also make sure your passport won’t trip you up at the border. I wrote about the six-month passport rule that catches a lot of travelers, and if you’re still pricing flights, my post on the cheapest time to fly is worth a look before you book.
So, is travel insurance worth it? For the part of your trip that’s nonrefundable and the part of your body that’s irreplaceable, yes. For everything else, keep the money and spend it on gelato.