For a family with 3 children the cost of the most expensive policy swells to over 6 times higher than the cheapest. The survey found Thomas Cook to be the most expensive and Primary Direct to offer the cheapest deals, and advised readers to look for a policy which prices your family as a single entity and charges the same joint premium no matter how many children you have, or how many of you travel at the same time. In other words if you buy travel insurance from your travel agent you are being ripped off. Even though you are not legally obliged to buy it from the agent, falling into their trap is easy. Accordingly, travel agents are entitled to ask you whether or not you are insured when taking your booking, and may pressure you into buying theirs.
Travel insurance delivers the agent a far superior profit margin to the holiday itself.
This anomaly is a function of another one, and that is that people with annual policies seem to make fewer and less expensive claims than the single-trip crowd. As with any insurance policy, always check the small print to see what happens if only certain members of the family are going on one particular trip, because a lot of policies stipulate that everybody must travel together. Even if you only ski once a year, taking out an annual policy seems to be the smart thing to do, besides it will do for your other holidays as well. Since November 1998, travel companies have been banned from insisting that customers take out their cover to qualify for a discounted holiday. For annual policies, Churchill, Primary Direct and Direct Travel have received good to glowing reviews for efficient and generous payouts when the dreaded accident happens.