9 Hidden Reasons Cruise Insurance Is So Expensive

Booking a cruise isn’t cheap – and when you add insurance on top, the cost can really make your eyes water. If you’ve ever compared it to regular travel insurance, you’ve probably noticed cruise cover is often much more expensive.

But skipping it isn’t an option. Without the right cover, you could face massive bills if something goes wrong at sea.

In this guide, I’ll explain why cruise insurance costs more than standard travel insurance – and why, in many cases, it’s worth every penny.

1. You’re at Sea

The most basic but obvious reason for cruise insurance being more expensive than other travel insurance is the fact that you’re often at sea.

And that means two things:

1. You don’t have access to all the medical facilities you might need immediately
2. It can be a lot harder to get you to a hospital if things get serious

On most cruises, you’re going to be within a day or two of a port of call, so you can get to a hospital or other medical centre for non-urgent treatment without too much stress.

But if something serious happens, you’re going to have to manage with the onboard medical facilities, or you’ll be looking at an emergency evacuation – either causing the cruise ship to change course, or a helicopter coming to pick you up.

As you can imagine, these are all extremely expensive solutions, and so cruise insurance needs to be high because the insurance companies need to make enough money to cover all the costs when they do need to pay out.

The vast majority of people who buy cruise insurance aren’t going to need airlifting to a hospital, but for the occasional ones that do, insurers need to earn enough to cover those costs and still turn a profit.

2. You Visit Multiple Countries

Visiting multiple countries on one holiday will push the prices of your insurance up, because it adds an extra layer of uncertainty to your situation if something does go wrong.

This could be because the insurer has to account for the fact that you might need assistance in one of the countries with limited healthcare, even if the majority of your cruise ports have excellent hospitals.

Or there’s the factor of what happens if you get sick, but then recover. You can’t just hop in a taxi after being discharged from the hospital to get back to your hotel. Your insurer will need to pay for flights so that you can catch up with the ship.

3. Cruises Are More Liable to Be Cancelled

Cruise insurance doesn’t just cover the cost of medical problems, but it’s also used to help cover the costs of cancelled cruises. And cruises are going to be cancelled more than other types of holiday.

That’s because of various factors, including problems with the ship, or stormy weather – issues which can affect a hotel, but not to the point that it usually causes you to have to cancel your entire trip. But with a cruise, those factors can be much more problematic.

It’s also a lot harder for a cruise company to offer you an alternative at short notice. If a flight is cancelled because of bad weather, you’ll normally be offered a different flight within a day or so. Or if a hotel is overbooked, you’ll be transferred to another.

But that can’t happen with cruise ships since there aren’t enough ships from the same cruise line, in the same part of the world, with enough spare cabins. This means more outright cancellations, and therefore more insurance payouts.

4. Drinks Packages Exist

Cruise lines certainly like to make sure their guests are having fun, and one way they’ll often do that is to permit guests to book a drinks package.

These offer unlimited drinks during the day, which means that guests can easily become intoxicated and essentially remain that way during the entire cruise, just topping themselves up each morning.

To be clear, though, you aren’t going to be able to claim on your insurance for injuries or accidents that occur while you are intoxicated. That’s just going to wipe out any claim you might have.

But if you’re injured by someone else who is drunk – accidentally or, heaven forbid, on purpose – then you could potentially make a claim.

And with so many people using drinks packages to their fullest, that’s a lot of potential for accidents or even assaults to occur, which in turn means higher premiums to cover that cost.

5. Cruises Are Still Popular With Older Guests

While cruise ships have definitely started to become a lot more family-focused, adding facilities aimed at kids and at younger adults, there’s still a huge proportion of passengers that are older, with many people still cruising into their 70s, 80s, 90s, and sometimes even older.

Naturally, that means those passengers are at higher risk of making claims, as they’re more likely to have existing medical conditions that could cause problems, or they’re just more likely to suffer from injury or illness while sailing.

That means they will pay a significantly higher cost for cruise insurance, but it will also drive up prices for multigenerational families.

If you’re cruising with parents/grandparents, be aware that a family policy might be a lot more expensive than you planned for.

6. Airlines Are Losing More Luggage Than Ever

Does it seem like airlines are just getting worse? Well, when it comes to baggage handling, statistics show that they are, with a whopping 26 million bags lost in one year.

That’s including all travel, but many cruise passengers will fly to their ship, and so it’s their cruise travel insurance that’s responsible for the flight. You wouldn’t typically buy separate travel insurance for the cruise and the flight portions of your trip.

So, with more bags going AWOL, that means more payouts by insurers, which means higher costs. It doesn’t contribute to cruise insurance being more expensive than other travel types, but it does partially account for it being expensive in itself.

7. People Often Take More Risks When Cruising

When you’re cruising, you don’t tend to just stay on the ship. You’ll spend a lot of time in port, exploring each city or town that you visit, and you might also take part in various shore excursions that might involve some adventurous activities. 

These could include horse riding along the beach, or a safari tour – things that are thrilling, but that might increase your risk levels compared to a more relaxing beach holiday. And that can make insurance costs higher.

However, the most extreme shore excursions likely won’t be included in your cruise insurance, so you need to check that when you take out a policy. If you’re planning on swimming with sharks, or any water sports, you might need to take out specialist cover, which, again, will add even more expense.

8. The Chances of Becoming Ill Can Be Higher

Cruise lines will try to deny it, but sickness bugs such as norovirus can be surprisingly common. You aren’t guaranteed to get sick when you cruise, but there is an increased risk – because, if you’re on a ship, illnesses get onto every surface, and no matter how hard the crew works, germs spread.

So there’s a potentially increased risk of getting sick when you’re cruising, which could result in you needing to claim for medical issues, or maybe cabin confinement if you’ve added that onto your policy.

9. Cruises Are Often Longer Than Land Holidays

While this won’t apply if you’re booking a shorter cruise, bear in mind that many cruises last longer than your typical 7-14-night land holiday.

Some may last 18-21 nights, or you could be on a much longer itinerary, and that means much higher insurance prices.

It’ll scale up too, for the length of your trip. Don’t expect a 4-week cruise to have double the insurance of a 2-week cruise. You’re likely more at risk the longer you sail, so the insurance costs might ramp up considerably for those longer sailings.

How to Get the Best Price

While cruise insurance can be expensive, you can bring the cost down if you’re smart and use a price comparison website.

Instead of just going directly to one insurance provider, using a comparison site means you’ll get the best prices possible, and a wider choice of policies with different levels of cover.

And just like with most types of insurance, it’ll vary on which provider is cheapest for you – what’s expensive for one family might be cheap for another, depending on their cruise, medical history and more.

For the UK, I recommend Compare Your Cruise Insurance, and if you’re in the US, then InsureMyTrip is a good site to use.

If you’re based elsewhere, search online for cruise insurance price comparison, and you should find a good option to use.

Make sure you check out the 7 things you need to know before buying cruise insurance, too, as that’ll help you find the right policy at the right price.

I also have a Cruise Insurance Buyer’s Guide for you.

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