Can I Buy Travel Insurance After Booking? - NerdWallet (2024)

When you’re planning a trip away from home, travel insurance provides peace of mind, especially for pricey vacations. Maybe you’ve already started booking a trip and only now realized travel insurance might be a good idea. You may be wondering, “Can I buy travel insurance after booking my trip or purchasing plane tickets?”

The short answer is: Yes, you can.

However, timing is everything when it comes to buying travel insurance — and some options won’t be available if you wait too long. Here's a look at buying travel insurance, the best times to purchase it and when it’s too late to get it.

Depending on what you’re doing, travel insurance can provide coverage for a variety of situations, including medical care, trip delays, lost luggage and even trip cancellation.

If travel insurance is something you’re considering, you’ll want to purchase it sooner rather than later — but not before booking your travel.

Before booking

You won’t want to buy insurance before you book any travel, especially if you aren’t firm on your plans. Policies such as trip cancellation insurance are meant to protect you against nonrefundable losses that you have incurred. If you haven’t booked your travel yet, you won’t know your out-of-pocket costs or how much coverage you’ll need.

After booking

While it’s not recommended to purchase travel insurance before booking travel, you’ll want to do so as soon as your reservations are made. At this point, you can expect to see the greatest number of options to choose from, including Cancel For Any Reason insurance.

It is possible to purchase travel insurance up until the very last minute — most insurance companies will allow you to buy a policy until the day before departure. Keep in mind that your options will be limited if you wait, however, and some benefits such as trip cancellation and interruption may no longer be available.

The best time to purchase travel insurance is as soon as your reservations have been made. Waiting a long period of time after booking your trip can make you ineligible for certain types of insurance. Examples of this include:

Finally, your ability to buy travel insurance evaporates if you aren’t already covered when an event arises. Just like you are unable to buy cell phone insurance when you’ve already cracked your screen, you can’t buy most types of travel insurance if your trip has already been affected.

Let’s say that you booked a trip to France last June. You’ve been intending to buy trip cancellation insurance but have been putting it off. However, just two weeks before you’re set to leave, you slip down a set of stairs and break your leg. Now you’re rocking a set of crutches and there’s no way you’re fitting in that economy class seat you’d booked.

Trip cancellation insurance would have covered you for any nonrefundable purchases you’d made due to your unforeseen injury. But now that your leg is already broken, it’s no longer an option. Because trip cancellation insurance isn’t retroactive, you’ll just have to absorb the cost.

How close to a trip can you buy insurance? We’ve outlined some specific situations above in which you’re no longer able to buy travel insurance, including time-sensitive policies that must be purchased soon after you make your reservations.

Otherwise, you’re able to buy most types of travel insurance all the way until the day before you begin traveling. Any time after that — even 12:01 a.m. on your departure date — and it’s too late to insure your trip.

Can you buy travel insurance at the airport?

No, you can’t buy travel insurance at the airport. You also can’t buy it when you’ve already boarded your cruise, you’ve chosen not to attend a tour or your flight is so late it causes you to miss your connection.

Travel insurance can be a good idea for many reasons, especially if you’re worried about anything going wrong during your trip or if you’ve invested a lot of money into a vacation. Happily, for procrastinators, most types of travel insurance are available after you’ve already booked your travel. You’ll simply need to make the purchase at least one day before travel.

However, there are some types of coverage that you’ll need to buy soon after booking or they won’t be available. These include Cancel for Any Reason insurance as well as pre-existing medical condition insurance. So if you are interested in buying travel insurance, purchasing a policy soon after booking your trip is the best way to go.