Earlier this year the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign civil engineering professor was planning a trip to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to take part in a National Sc
ience Foundation workshop. Because the costs were adding up quickly, he chose cheaper, no
nrefundable options for his flights and hotels — as well as the Travel Guard insurance that United Airlines Inc. offered.
“I walked in thinking, ‘Travel insurance is good, and it will protect me,'” he says. Popovics scanned his policy, noting the many scenarios it covered, from lost luggage to a terrorist attack.
Then the US attacked Iran in February, and the National Science Foundation called off the event.
“When I tried to get my money back, they said, ‘Sir, we don’t cover acts of war,'” Popovics recalls. “I was shocked.”
It’s a chaotic time to travel. Over the past several months alone, travelers have found themselves stranded in the Caribbean because of US military intervention
in Venezuela, unable to fly into or out of Mexican airports due to cartel violence and stranded througho
ut the Middle East when airspace shut down around Iran. Federal funding lapses have led to
ballooned security lines and other disruptions at US airports. Now fuel shortages are threatening to upend summer travel, making it m
ore expensive, less flexible and rife with flight reductions.
Between unexpected events and increasingly aggressive travel insurance marketing — you’ll see it as an add-on option to almost any type of booking — consumers are scooping up policies at record levels. According to the U
S Travel Insurance Association’s most recent data, Americans spent $5.56 billion on travel insurance in
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2024, a 46% increase from 2019. And individual companies report continued growth since then. At
Berkshire Hathaway Travel Protection, policy sales were up 15% last year and an additional 7% in the first quarter of2026.
But many consumers are finding that, as Popovics experienced and Tom Waits sang, the large
print giveth and the small print taketh away: War, global fuel shortages and government shutdowns are all scenarios that are rarely covered by insurance policies.
“It’s the implied promise of every travel insurance policy: If something goes wrong, we’ve got your ba
ck,” says Christopher Elliott, a consumer advocate whose nonprofit, Elliott Advocacy, addresses some
10,000 to 20,000 travel disputes annually, a meaningful share of them travel insurance claims. “That’s simply untrue.”
Travel insurance customers have long complained online about gotcha clauses and foot-dragging on claims. But scroll through the communities of travelers sh
aring their recent experiences on social media, and you’ll find many who in recent months have lost thou
sands of dollars on missed trips or spent fortunes on hotels and flights after being stranded in foreign co
untries. Almost all of them were shocked to have their claims denied by insurance companies.
Robert Gallagher, CEO of North America for Zurich Cover-More, the company that owns Travel Guard, said in a statement that insurance is about sharing risk.
“Exclusions like this exist because these types of conflicts can trigger mass evacuations, infrastructure collapse and widespread disruption affecting thousands of travelers
all at once,” he said. “That would place unsustainable pressure on the shared risk pool and ultimately compromise the affordability of coverage available for everyone.”
Popovics did manage to recover most of his costs. United Airlines charged a fee to change his fli
ght, and after much stonewalling from Priceline, he received a hotel refund. In the future, he says, he will pony up for refundable bookings, not for insurance.
His story is a reminder that while travel insurance can be helpful in the event of medical emergencies or o
ther trip disruptions, it’s not the saving grace that many people imagine. Here’s a guide to how travel insurance works for US consumers and what it does — and doesn’t — buy you.
