Winter-sports travel insurance

Compare Winter Sports travel insurance

For enthusiasts, nothing quite beats the thrill of a winter sports trip. Whether you’re a skier, a snowboarder or skater, you’ll be looking forward to the chills and thrills of whatever you have planned.

We know that you might be too busy getting excited about your trip to think about winter sports travel insurance, but it’s worth a few minutes of your time. Nobody wants to imagine something going wrong while they’re away but, while it’s thankfully rare, incidents and accidents do happen.

A standard travel insurance policy may not cover you for winter sports, so it’s important to make sure your policy is specifically designed to cover the winter sports that you’re going to be participating in.

What are the benefits of winter sports cover?

Winter sports are certainly popular – but you need to make sure you have the right cover. You might be familiar with a standard travel insurance policy already, and the features of those standard policies will be included in winter sports cover. With a good winter sport policy though you’ll get extra cover that you need on such a holiday.

The following items are examples of additional cover that you’ll typically find in a good winter sports policy:

• Loss of ski pass/winter sports equipment – If you lose your ski pass, your insurance could come to the rescue and get you back on the slopes. If your equipment, or equipment you’ve hired is stolen, destroyed or lost, you may be covered against the cost of replacements.

• Avalanche delay – If access to your resort is blocked, or scheduled transport you’ve booked is cancelled as a result of an avalanche, your winter sports insurance may offer you compensation.

• Piste closure – If you’re prevented from skiing for more than 24 hours as a result of insufficient snow that closes all the lifts at your resort, you may be able to claim compensation or money towards an alternative.
• Equipment hire – If your luggage is delayed or misplaced on the outward journey, your winter sport travel insurance may pay towards the hire of alternative equipment at your resort.
• Off piste – More experienced skiers may wish to enjoy off piste skiing. A good winter sport policy may cover you for this, but beware, restrictions usually apply.

Things to look out for in winter sports policies

The cover offered in winter sport policies can vary significantly. Terms, conditions, excesses and limits will all differ and will make a big difference to the cover you’re actually getting. Pay attention to:

• Medical cover

Dealing with an injury will be painful enough worrying about the costs of medical treatment abroad could make things even more stressful. It’s important to check the terms of the cover. Are you happy with the limits and any exclusions that apply? Is mountain rescue and repatriation included as standard or do you need to add it?

• Lost, stolen or damaged items

Standard in travel policies, be aware of limits including those for single items, particularly if you are taking your expensive ski or snowboarding gear with you.

• Cancellation cover

Whereas a twisted ankle in the run up to a beach holiday might not spoil things too much, it might wreck a skiing holiday as you may need to cancel. With accompanying evidence from your doctor you may be able to get your money back on an expensive trip provided you have adequate cancellation cover.

Finding cheap winter sports insurance

We all want to save money on our insurance and the temptation will always be to buy the cheapest policy available.  With winter sports cover however, it’s really important that you don’t buy simply on price alone.

It would be really false economy to save a few pounds on your policy, only to find that you have a very large excess or you’re not covered for certain important aspects at all.

To make sure this doesn’t happen you need to look at the policy details attached to those policies that interest you. With our comparison service we make that really simple to do.

To compare cheap winter sports travel insurance quotes, you'll simply need a few obvious details. The personal details of those travelling, where and when you’re going and the rest then is down to us.

We’ll present back to you a comprehensive list of quotes for you to choose from.  You can filter the search results if some elements are more important than others and our ‘more details’ button is vital for you to find out more detail around what your policy covers.