Consider This if You’re Planning a Cruise to Cuba
Maybe you’re like me; you’ve been waiting nearly your entire cruising life to experience the short voyage from Florida to Cuba. If Cuba is on your travel agenda, especially by cruise ship (and especially if you don’t fly), you might want to make your voyage sooner than later. There’s always a chance that the gangway to cruise to Cuba could close if there’s a “full review of all U.S. policies toward Cuba”.
Plus with a short cruising season to Cuba, you don’t want to miss out on an exciting Cuba cruise experience. What if you’ve booked and paid for your cruise and wham! the U.S. government restricts travel to Cuba? Do you lose all of your money paid to the cruise line if this should happen?
Did you buy travel insurance?
A standard travel insurance trip cancellation policy will not cover any government imposed travel restrictions. The only way to protect your investment is to purchase a policy with a Cancel For Any Reason upgrade. Known affectionately as CFAR, this upgrade benefit will kick in should you be kept out of Cuba.
The trick to CFAR is that, no matter which travel insurance company you use, it must be purchased with your travel insurance policy within 14-30 days of your deposit payment. Different travel insurance companies have different time requirements. And you have to buy travel insurance that covers the entire cost of your trip.
CFAR comes with a price tag, too. It’s an optional upgrade and can add a bit more cost to your travel insurance premium purchase. But it will give you peace of mind should you need to cancel your trip due to a sudden change in our government’s policy towards travel to Cuba.
If this should happen, you simply file a claim with your travel insurance company. While you may not receive a refund for the entire cost of your cruise, usually you’ll get up to 75% refunded. This beats getting nothing back at all.
Or you could cross your fingers that the cruise line will give everyone a refund, should the voyage be canceled.
Check your policy for cancellation rules so you stay under the umbrella of protection timeline to cancel with CFAR.
I recommend using Insure My Trip, which lets you shop and compare multiple travel insurance policies at one time, so you can find the best one for your trip.
As I hope to hop on a cruise to Cuba asap and not risk the window closing, I will for sure purchase a trip cancellation policy with a CFAR upgrade.
