Travel Calendar

DAYTONA BEACH — When John Notaras was growing up during the Cold War, Cuba conjured up images of an island fortress populated by communists bent on destroying America.

That vision stayed with him until Charley Gonzalez, a Daytona Beach businessman, talked him into visiting the island nation on a humanitarian trip.

When Notaras stepped foot on Cuban soil, he found the people welcomed him with open arms rather than clenched fists.

“My eyes were completely opened to what a beautiful country it is,” Notaras said. “People will invite you into their house. They offer you food. They offer you coffee. The people are just phenomenal.”

Others could be joining Notaras in traveling to Cuba legally. A policy change by President Barack Obama this past year opened the door to tour operators to offer cultural travel to Cuba under a program known as people-to-people.

With the looser rules, Gonzalez and Daytona Beach videographer Paul Prewitt launched Hot Cuba Travel, one of the first companies in the area to offer cultural trips to Cuba. Only 120 operators hold licenses, said John Sullivan, a spokesman for U.S. Department of Treasury.

Starting at $2,000, Hot Cuba Travel will organize visits based on travelers’ interests.

While it’s now easier to experience the sights and sounds of Havana, visiting Cuba on a people-to-people license isn’t the same as an island-resort vacation, Prewitt said.

“This travel isn’t about going to the beach and sipping a rum drink,” he said.

People-to-people licenses require visitors to stick to itineraries and experience the island’s culture. Visitors stay in casas particulares, which are private homes — similar to a bed and breakfast — permitted by the government to accommodate visitors.

Unfettered travel remains effectively illegal under the embargo. American tourists can technically visit Cuba, but it’s against the law for them to spend money there.

President Bill Clinton created people-to-people licenses in 1999, but the government stopped issuing them in 2003 when President George W. Bush was in office.

In January 2011, Obama renewed the program, citing the need to enhance the free flow of information to the Cuban people.

Not everyone has embraced the policy change. Critics, such as U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Miami, argue the tours will help to prop up the communist dictatorship in Cuba.

In a statement, Ros-Lehtinen said allowing more travel to Cuba is “filling up the coffers of the Castro dictatorship so it can improve its repressive machinery against the Cuban people.” Under the new rules, anyone with a U.S. passport is eligible to travel to Cuba for cultural exchange purposes, Gonzalez said. Travelers must obtain a visa from the Cuban government, along with health insurance. Both of those tasks are handled by Hot Cuba Travel.

Chartered flights to Cuba — a roughly one-hour trip — leave from Tampa and Miami.

Travelers who have accompanied Gonzalez on his trips say there are plenty of reasons to visit the island nation. Dome-like mountains called mogotes tower over some of the world’s best tobacco plantations. The house where Ernest Hemingway penned his novels and the bars where he drank still stand. Buildings dating from the 1700s beckon to passersby. Antique cars patched together through the years because of the embargo cruise the streets of Havana.

Then there is the food. That was one of the best parts of Cuba for Fred Kaiser, an auto dealer from DeLand.

“I’d go again for the food,” he said. “They can do something with pork that no one else in the world can.”

Under U.S. law, visitors can only return with art, music and literature. Packing away cigars, rum or other items is prohibited.

Both Prewitt. 54, and Gonzalez, 53, have a special relationship with Cuba.

Prewitt spent a decade filming a documentary called “Viva Cuba” about the island nation’s people and its culture. The film is set to be released in the fall.

Gonzalez, who owns the audio store Stereotypes, was born in Daytona Beach to Cuban parents who immigrated to America before the revolution.

He visited Cuba when he was an infant in 1959. Because of the embargo, he didn’t return until 20 years later after spending his entire childhood without having ever seen his grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins and other relatives.

Gonzalez said his business isn’t political, but he hopes that one day tourists and goods will be able to flow freely in and out of Cuba.

“There should be no walls,” he said.

Despite the overall increase in airfares across the country, the cost of flying to a few places, such as Palm Springs and Chicago, has dropped.

A study released last week by the travel website Hotwire.com unveiled the five cities in America where airfares, hotel rates and car rental costs fell the most in March compared with last year.

Hotel rates in Atlantic City, N.J., had the biggest decline, falling 21% to an average of $90 per night for a four-star hotel, according to the website. It attributed the drop to the opening of new hotels during a slow time of the tourism season.

Airfares to both Palms Springs and Chicago fell 13% compared with last year, according to Hotwire. Round-trip flights to Palm Springs sold for an average of $308 in March, while flights to Chicago were priced at $234, according to the website.

Meanwhile, travelers can enjoy the nation’s biggest drop in car rental rates in Boston, where rates fell 60% to $17 a day in March, according to Hotwire. Washington came in second in the ranking, with car rental rates declining 58% to $20 a day.

But the biggest savings may be for travel to Albuquerque, which made the top five cities list twice. Airfares to Albuquerque dropped 11% to $330 and car rental rates fell 46% to $20 a day, according to Hotwire.

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Often called Mexico’s “Silicon Valley,” Guadalajara is the country’s headquarters for Intel, IBM, HP, and many other tech firms. As such, it has been a destination for business travelers since the early 1990s.

There’s much more to be seen and enjoyed in Guadalajara for those who aren’t on business trips, however. The city has long attracted arts and culture aficionados with its world-renowned international film festival and international book fair, both held annually. Mexico’s second largest city is also known for its mariachi festival, which attracts visitors from all over the world for 10 days every September.

Budget Travel: Antigua, Guatemala

Foodies know Guadalajara has exceptional restaurants—and that they don’t just serve traditional or contemporary Mexican cuisine – and few travelers to the city miss a side trip to the town of Tequila to learn how Mexico’s iconic spirit is made (and, of course, to try samples).

As if all that wasn’t enough, sports fans regularly descend on the city for international competitions; the 2011 Pan American Games were held here and Mexico’s premiere soccer team, the Chivas, calls Guadalajara home. Traditional events include bullfighting and charreria, both of which are alive and well in Guadalajara—and not just among fans from older generations.

Anytime is a good time to visit Guadalajara. Temperatures are mild year-round and the constant flow of business travel means that there’s not a sharp distinction between high season and low season, keeping hotel prices relatively stable throughout the year.

Budget Travel: Best Spas in Latin America

You might be surprised to learn that this high-culture city isn’t inaccessible to budget travelers. In fact, Guadalajara is exceedingly friendly for solo travelers, couples, and families on a shoestring, and the budget traveler’s experience will be just as rich as that of the deep-pocketed traveler. Smart planning can help you save money and still see the best that Guadalajara has to offer.

Julie Schwietert Collazo is a freelance writer based in New York City.

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On a shelf at my desk I have a collection of six travel mugs. They’re not there because I have some need for a wide variety of travel mugs, or a particular interest in collecting them, or even a travel mug fetish, whatever that would look like.

They’re there because I don’t know what to do with them.

Every event I go to, someone gives me a travel mug. It’s a nice gesture, and I’m not complaining. (Well, I am, but I feel guilty about it.) My boss got back from D.C. this week and he brought me – you guessed it – a company travel mug.

Each mug has its own quirks. Some have sliding sip openings. One has a handle. They have grips and lips. Some lids unscrew and others pop off.

All of them are unused, covered in a layer of dust.

Why? Easy. They’re part-metal, and microwave ovens don’t like metal.

Back when we got our first microwave, in the mid-80s I suppose it was, one of the first things I tried to heat was coffee, and for this gleaming new technology I used my gleaming futuristic Epcot Center mug, which was coated in silvery metal.

Remember that scene from “Raiders of the Lost Ark” where the sniveling German accountant picks a medallion out of the fire? That was me. Only no cool map to the Ark of the Covenant seared into my flesh – just the shape of a mug handle.

So I know better than to put metal in a microwave. I also tend heat up a lot of stale coffee. Fresh coffee is a luxury for me; I drink way too much of it to brew a pot every time. This means my travel mug has to be plastic. (Yes, yes, leaching phthalates from microwaved plastic and all that. But we all have to die of something, and if I die as a byproduct of hot coffee, it’s not a bad way to go.)

Until recently, I owned the perfect plastic travel mug. It was just the right size for a double cup of coffee. It had great lip feel. It had a handle. And best of all, it fit perfectly in our minivan cupholder, so when I veered off MLK onto I-24 it wouldn’t tip over. I’d carry it from gas station to gas station, getting those 75-cent refills instead of paying full price for countless cardboardish cups.

My personal tragedy: It’s gone. I have no idea where my mug went. It’s probably sitting on the shelf of some relative or friend who’s trying to figure out how they ended up with an old, plastic, phthalate-leaching, scratched-up, black coffee mug. Or worse, it’s sitting on a shelf in their office with all of their unneeded travel mugs.

If you’ve seen my mug, or more likely if you’ve stolen my mug, it’s OK. I’m not angry. I just want it back, safe and leachy. If you don’t mind, fill it with coffee and heat it up for me first. And yes, you can use whatever’s left in the pot.

SINGAPORE — It’s a scene repeated endlessly at most of Southeast Asia’s main airports — planes forced to circle overhead or idle on the tarmac and travelers stuck in long lines at immigration desks, security checkpoints and baggage carousels.

And it’s likely to get worse in capitals like Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Bangkok and Manila in years to come as overcrowded airports and outdated infrastructure are twinned with a huge spike in the number of aircraft in the region.

Southeast Asian carriers have ordered $47 billion worth of aircraft for the coming decade but the deals could be under threat because of the inability of airports to keep pace. That could be a blow to manufacturers like Boeing and Airbus.

“You can buy as many aircraft as you like but if the infrastructure does not keep up then you are going to see a degraded service that may prevent you from executing plans to grow the airline,” Andrew Herdman, director general of the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines, told Reuters.

The problem could force low-cost carriers such as Malaysia’s AirAsia Bhd and Indonesia’s privately held Lion Air — the world’s biggest buyers of passenger jets — to delay or even cancel some orders from Airbus and Boeing.

Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta International Airport now serves more than 51 million passengers a year, more than twice its design capacity when it was built in the mid-1980s.

Bangkok’s main Suvarnabhumi Airport is often beset by two-hour immigration queues and is running over capacity less than six years after it opened, which led Thailand’s government to encourage low-cost carriers to move to the old Don Muang Airport to help ease congestion.

Passengers can wait for hours at Kuala Lumpur’s overcrowded budget terminal, the hub for AirAsia. After clearing immigration lines that can be at least 50 people long, the walk to the plane at the tarmac can be hundreds of metres with only a strip of corrugated steel overhead as cover against the elements.

With pressure from AirAsia and scenes of chaotic check-ins, government-linked operator Malaysia Airports is rushing to complete another budget terminal that is due to be up and running by April 2013.

Projected construction costs have nearly doubled to 3.9 billion ringgit ($1.27 billion) as the planned capacity of the new airport has been expanded to 45 million passengers a year from an initial plan of 30 million.

Time is money

Jakarta’s airport is infamous for planes sitting for nearly an hour on the tarmac before take-off or circling overhead as they await their turn to land. One-hour flights between Singapore and the Indonesian capital can easily drag to two hours or more because of the overcrowded runway.

The hundreds of bankers and executives who fly regularly from Jakarta to Singapore on Monday mornings need to leave home in the dark to catch a 6 a.m. flight and often they still get caught in traffic jams on the toll road to the airport.

That has led to tense times for airline executives dealing with what they politely refer to as “influential” passengers who get to the airport late or get stuck in traffic.

Airline sources said these passengers do not hesitate to call them or even the chief executive on their mobile phones to ask for the plane to wait for them.

“It is a common problem,” one of the sources said. “We could never entertain these kinds of requests unless they are the president or the vice president of Indonesia. But some customers can be quite impolite and scream at us.”

The number of low-cost carriers (LCC) and their routes have expanded rapidly in Southeast Asia over the last 10 years. Analysts and industry executives see more growth ahead due to a lack of reliable alternatives and strong economic growth.

“Ten years ago, the airports in this region would probably not have foreseen that LCC demand could be as strong as it is today,” Chin Yau Seng, chief executive officer of Singapore-based budget carrier Tiger Airways, told Reuters.

Airport congestion makes it tougher for carriers to keep their on-time performance and pushes up operating costs as planes waste fuel waiting to take off or land.

“If this problem persists for the long run, airlines in general will have to take into account all the additional costs that they have to incur and pass them on to customers,” Edward Sirait, a director at Lion Air, told Reuters.

“If customers cannot accept those additional costs then airlines, whoever they are, will have to rethink their investment decisions and spending.”

Lion recently firmed up an order for 230 Boeing 737s worth $22.4 billion, eclipsing the record for the world’s biggest commercial aircraft deal set by AirAsia when it signed up to buy 200 Airbus A320neo jets for $18 billion.

Despite the growth and big orders, Southeast Asia remains a market that has been under served by carriers.

Con Korfiatis, vice president of Garuda Indonesia’s budget carrier Citilink, said only 300 single-aisle jets serve the country’s population of 230 million, compared with 3,000 in the United States, which has 310 million people.

Boeing sees Asia-Pacific carriers as the biggest buyers of planes over the 20-year period to 2030 as they are expected to acquire 11,450 passenger jets valued at $1.5 trillion — more than a third of global demand.

Racing against the clock

A number of airports in Southeast Asia are expanding but some industry watchers say the efforts may not be enough to keep up with additional capacity and demand.

By Jill Reilly

Banned: Asma al-Assad, can no longer travel or shop in the EU comes as diplomats try to crank up pressure on her husband to end a bloody crackdown on popular unrest

Her days of shopping in the EU for the president’s palace are over, as ministers have decided the wife of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is no longer welcome.

The ban on travel and shopping in the EU, will come as a blow to Asma al-Assad, whose love of pricey purchases has been well documented in the past few weeks in leaked emails.

They detailed Asma placing an order for £10,000 worth of candlesticks, concern over getting hold of a new chocolate fondue set from Amazon, and swapping details with friends of crystal-encrusted designer shoes costing nearly £4,000.

The announcement comes as diplomats try to crank up pressure on his government to end a bloody crackdown on popular unrest.

Her name is now among 12 people added to the sanctions list, which already includes her husband.

The list will be released over the weekend, but diplomats confirmed the list includes Mr. Assad’s mother, sister as well.

They said that Mr. Assad’s 36-year-old wife would be subject to the EU’s asset freeze and banned from traveling to all EU member states except the U.K.

British authorities will decide whether they prevent her entering the country and a U.K. diplomat said it is premature for a decision on the issue.

Speaking ahead of a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels, EU’s foreign policy chief, Baroness Ashton, said sanctions were ”a really important tool.’

UK Foreign Secretary William Hague said it was ‘very important to increase the pressure on the Syrian regime.’

A British-born former investment
banker who had once cultivated an image of a woman inspired by Western
values, Asma al-Assad has become a hate figure for many Syrians.

Crackdown: A British-born former investment, Asma al-Assad has become a hate figure for many Syrians. She has stood by her husband during a year-long crackdown on popular unrest in which the U.N. says at least 8,000 people have died

Luxury: shop Leaked emails detailed Asma swapping details with friends about designer shoes costing and concern over getting hold of a new
chocolate fondue set from Amazon, as her husband’s troops slaughtered protestors

She
has stood by her husband during a year-long crackdown on popular unrest
in which the U.N. says at least 8,000 people have died.

Last week activists released some 3,000 emails they said were from private accounts belonging to Mr Assad and his wife.

The messages, which have not been independently verified, suggested Mrs Assad continued to shop online for luxury goods
while Syria descended into bloodshed.

She comes across as a shallow
ingenue, focused on internet shopping rather than the horrific plight of
the people she professes to care for.

The EU has
responded to Syria’s violence with a broad range of sanctions, which
include a ban on Syrian oil imports to Europe and measures against the
Syrian central bank and other companies and state institutions.

Foreign
ministers of EU member states are set to agree on a new round of
measures, the bloc’s 13th, and impose asset freezes and bans on travel
to the EU against 12 people, include Asma.

Policy: Speaking ahead of the meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels, EU’s foreign policy chief, Baroness Ashton, said sanctions were ‘a really important tool’

Agreement: William Hague, British Foreign Secretary, shakes the hand of Jose Manuel Garcia Margallo, Spanish Foreign Minister, at the start of a Foreign Affairs Council meeting at the European Council headquarters in Brussels, Belgium today

A prohibition for European companies to do business with two more Syrian entities is also planned.

‘The
text (of sanctions) has gone through,’ said one EU diplomat, referring
to an agreement reached by EU envoys in Brussels to a list of new
sanctions. Another diplomat confirmed Assad’s wife is included in the
list of sanctioned individuals.

The list still needs formal approval
from ministers. It will become public on Saturday when new sanctions are
due to go into effect.

Assad himself has been a target since May last year, but sanctions have had little impact on his policies so far.

Fighting: A Syrian woman, kisses a soldier from the Free Syrian Army yesterday in front of a destroyed Syrian army forces tank which was attacked during clashes between the Syrian government forces and the Syrian rebels, in Homs

Destruction: A house is destroyed by Syrian government shelling in Rastan town in Homs – the U.N. says at least 8,000 people have died during the crackdown on violence

Violence has intensified in recent weeks as pro-government forces bombard rebel towns and villages, looking to sweep their lightly armed opponents out of their strongholds.

The international community has struggled to formulate a joint approach in the face of opposition from Russia and China to any resolution by the U.N. Security Council.

Assad absorbed a major diplomatic blow on Wednesday, however, when Russia and China joined the Security Council in voicing support for U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan’s bid to end violence that has brought Syria to the brink of civil war.

WHO IS THE BRITISH-BORN WIFE OF SYRIA’S PRESIDENT?

Asma Assad

Asma Assad, 36, (pictured) grew up in Acton, West London where she was known as ‘Emma’.

She is the daughter of consultant cardiologist Fawaz Akhras and retired diplomat Sahar Otri, both Sunni Muslims.

Her parents moved from Syria to London in the Fifties so that her father, who is now based at the Cromwell Hospital and in Harley Street, could get the best possible education and medical training.

Asma, who holds dual citizenship,
British and Syrian, was educated at a Church of England school in Ealing
before attending a private girls’ day school – Queen’s College, Harley
Street.

From Queen’s,
where she achieved four A-levels, Asma went to King’s College London to
read Computer Science and take a diploma in French Literature.

She
graduated with a First and, after six months of travelling, joined
Deutsche Bank as an analyst in hedge-fund management. She then moved to
the investment bank JP Morgan and worked in Paris and New York, as well
as London. On family holidays back in Syria, she met Bashar.

Then he, too, came to London to study ophthalmology, though he had to leave early to return to Syria after his elder brother Basil, who had been the heir, died in a car crash.

Asma started seeing him in secret, resigning from JP Morgan just a month before the wedding without being able to explain the real reason. With her father, she has set up several London-based charities such as the Syria Heritage.

Vogue has described her as ‘the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies’ and has topped French Elle’s ‘most stylish woman in politics’ list. In Damascus, Bashar and Asma now live in a flat with plate-glass windows and their three boys go to a Montessori school.

Asma speaks four languages and her connections with France have led her to persuade the Louvre to help her open Syrian cultural attractions.

Traveling is very fun, but can often times be quite expensive. Budgeting and planning are big factors that tie into the overall success of your trip, especially when traveling to a place like Europe.

San Francisco , CA (PRWEB) March 25, 2012

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For the original version on PRWeb visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/prweb2012/3/prweb9316750.htm

Updated

March 26, 2012 01:34:55

Ill health has forced Aung San Suu Kyi to abruptly cancel further campaign travel, her party says, just a week before Burmese by-elections that are seen as a key test of regime reforms.

The Nobel laureate opposition leader, who is running for a seat in parliament in the April 1 polls, was put on a drip and ordered to rest by her doctor after falling ill in the town of Myeik in Myanmar’s far south.

Looking tired and drawn, Ms Suu Kyi arrived at Rangoon airport after cutting short her visit, saying only that she was “not well”.

Her doctor, Tin Myo Win, said that Ms Suu Kyi was getting better, but that he had asked that she cancel a final campaign trip on Tuesday and Wednesday to Magway, the central Myanmar region where her independence hero father was born.

“She is recovering, but she needs to rest for at least a week,” he said.

An increasingly frail-looking Ms Suu Kyi has been briefly taken ill once before during her gruelling schedule of rallies and speeches across the country.

The health of the opposition leader is likely to be a source of anxiety for the tens of thousands of supporters who have thronged to see her at almost every stage of the campaign.

Dr Tin Myo Win said Ms Suu Kyi had became exhausted and suffered vomiting and low blood pressure on Saturday after the boat she was travelling in got stuck on a sandbank for several hours during her trip in the south.

She pressed ahead with a final rally in Myeik on Sunday and was cheered by tens of thousands as she urged supporters to vote for her National League for Democracy party, according to a photographer at the scene.

“I’m trying to keep in good health,” she told the crowd, apologising for making only a brief speech before rushing to catch a flight back to Rangoon.

“I have been encouraged by the people,” she said.

A statement from the NLD confirmed the decision to cancel this week’s Magway trip.

The polls next week are the first time Ms Suu Kyi, whose Kawhmu constituency is near Rangoon, has been able to stand for election in a country dominated by the military for decades.

AFP

Topics:
world-politics,
burma

First posted

March 26, 2012 01:12:00

Stanford and Duke will meet in Monday’s regional final after the top-seeded Cardinal knocked out South Carolina 76-60 in Saturday’s late game. Duke trounced St. John’s 74-47 in the matinee.

While the lower level of the arena was fairly full between the baselines, rows upon rows of seats sat empty behind each basket. Pep bands, cheerleader squads and mascots from all four universities helped create a hoops atmosphere.

Sam and Maureen Gouldthorpe of Staten Island, N.Y., wouldn’t have missed the regional for anything, and not just because they’re huge St. John’s fans.

The Gouldthorpes’ twins are members of the Red Storm pep band. Dana plays tenor sax, while Kyle plays trumpet.

The entire family was in Norman, Okla., on Tuesday for the sub-regional.

But while Dana and Kyle came straight to Fresno from Oklahoma, Mom and Dad went back to New York for a couple of days before hopping a flight to Sacramento.

Sounds expensive.

“Priceline.com,” Sam Gouldthorpe said. “You never know. …”

Stanford fans outnumbered all others at the Save Mart Center, which is to be expected from the regional’s only West Coast school and its 160-mile proximity to Fresno.

But not all of the out-of-town fans from California came dressed in Cardinal colors. Certainly not the Kelley family of Oroville, who all wore Duke jerseys.

The Kelleys aren’t from North Carolina and have no connection to Duke. But Mick and Tina and their basketball-playing daughters, Sabrina and Amanda, are devoted Blue Devils backers.

“I was in the military and a guy I knew was a big North Carolina fan,” Tina Kelley said. “I just said, ‘I’ll be Duke.’ And it’s been that way ever since.”

Duke had another popular draw: Sophomore guard Chelsea Gray is from Stockton and had a large cheering section.

The Funks had planned to stick around Fresno for a couple of games whether or not the Blue Devils advanced to the regional final.

“We’ll try to stir up a little enthusiasm,” Larry Funk said.

Travel insurance not a luxury expense

Published 12:00am Sunday, March 25, 2012

Another question that I’m frequently asked deals with travel insurance. To many folks it is just another extra expense and they frequently brush it off with a comment like “I never get sick!”

My textbook answer is “How much will you lose if you cancel your trip the day of departure? What will it cost you if you have to fly back to the states from your European tour due to a medical emergency?”

There are hundreds of circumstances that could cause you to cancel your trip, return home early or force you to seek emergency medical treatment while traveling.

To demonstrate the importance of purchasing travel insurance, and emergency travel services, here are 10 common examples of what could go wrong.

It’s 10 p.m. and you and your immediate family arrive at the airport for a connecting flight, only to find that your flight has been cancelled. Who can assist you with finding new flights to get everyone home?

Your bag was lost with your insulin inside. You need help to locate your bag as soon as possible and have your emergency prescription filled. Who do you call?

Your first visit to Europe, and your passport and wallet are stolen. Where do you turn for emergency cash, and how will you get your passport replaced?

You’re involved in an accident and adequate medical treatment is not available. Who will help arrange and pay for a medical evacuation?

If your sister-in-law becomes seriously ill and you must cancel your trip, what happens to your non-refundable deposits or pre-payments?

You arrive in Jamaica and your luggage doesn’t. If it’s lost, who will help you find it? If it’s delayed, who will pay for your necessities? If it’s stolen, who will pay to replace it?

Your cruise line, airline or tour operator goes bankrupt. Who will pay for your non-refundable expenses? Who will help get you to your destination?

You’re walking down a street in Istanbul and a car backs into you, twisting your ankle. Who can help you find an English-speaking physician?

Three weeks before your scheduled arrival, a terrorist incident occurs in the city to which you are planning to visit. Who will pay if you want to cancel your trip?

You are at a beach resort in North Carolina, and you are forced to evacuate due to an approaching hurricane. Who will help you evacuate and who will reimburse your lost vacation investment?

Discussing some of these travel occurrences generally gets people’s attention. The conversation regarding insurance coverage becomes important and more focused. Many people are confused with how much coverage to purchase and a knowledgeable travel agent will be able to come up with a valid quote.

Another huge issue is the pre-existing conditions clause! This is an insurer’s get out of paying your claim tactic but if you follow a few basic and simple rules you can get the clause waived.

Timing counts here! You have to purchase travel insurance within the insurer’s deadline window for these three important types of coverage: (1) waiver of pre-existing conditions, (2) cancel-for-any-reason protection, and (3) travel supplier bankruptcy/default coverage. I always suggest that the best time to purchase this coverage is at the time when you make the trip deposit.

If you’re still not ready to buy insurance, most insurers typically allot between seven to 21 days after the initial trip deposit for you to still buy insurance with these protections. It varies by insurer.

Agents can tackle general policy features and pricing. But I recommend that you the traveler contact the insurer’s customer service department for any specific questions before you purchase the insurance coverage. You need to understand policy definitions and what each specific type of coverage entails.

Armed with this data you can then make an informed buying decision. If you opt out of buying insurance there’s a good chance that you’ll have to sign a release form stating that you were offered the option to purchase travel insurance and declined.

Here’s another benefit of working with a live agent. They can advise on the ins and outs of this very complex product. Yes most if not all on-line booking sources offer travel insurance but can they discuss your trip and specific needs? Doubtful!

Again I would like to repeat my automatic response to the insurance question “How much of your money can you really afford to lose? An investment in travel protection can give you the peace of mind that you really need to enjoy your vacation!”

There’s still time to join Ironton in Bloom on their spring getaway to the Biltmore gardens and estate. The travel dates for this fairly inclusive motor coach journey are Saturday April 28th and Sunday April 29th. For additional details contact me at 740.550.9540 or thetravelprofessor@gmail.com. With rising gas prices it makes sense to travel with a group. That being said I hope to see you on the bus!

Got travel questions or concerns? Email thetravelprofessor@gmail.com or call 740.550.9540.