Why might you not choose group travel insurance?

In some cases, group travel insurance might not be right for your situation. For example:

• If one of you has a pre-existing medical condition or is significantly older than the rest, they will cost more to insure, and might even need specialist insurance. It could make getting travel insurance and splitting the bill very complicated.
• If you’re getting separate flights you might not all be covered under a group travel insurance policy – always check the policy details to make sure.
• If you’ll be going on other trips in the same year, separately from the group, it might be cheaper overall to get an annual multi-trip policy or you may already have travel insurance packaged in with your bank account for example.
• If some of your party live in a different country from the rest, for example a group of friends going to a wedding overseas and a couple of them live in the Republic of Ireland

How many people do you need for group travel insurance cover?

It depends on the insurance provider that you choose to cover you. With Compare the Market, you can search for cheap group travel insurance quotes covering up to 10 people. With extremely large groups, you may need a specialist insurance policy.

How does group travel insurance work? 

Overall, group travel insurance works very much like any other type of travel insurance – the only difference is that it covers a group of people travelling together. You’ll usually be covered for certain events, such as cancellation, lost luggage,  medical treatment overseas and emergency repatriation – the exact coverage should be set out in your policy documentation. 

Of course, as with all travel insurance, there are things you need to be aware of, such as:

• Exclusions – for example, if insurance providers could believe excessive drinking led to a claim, this could lead to medical costs being rejected because of an alcohol exclusion clause.
• Limits
• Your policy excess
• Pre-existing medical conditions
• Policy extras like sports cover, water sports, or extreme sports

You all need to be happy with the level of cover and the amount of excess. Increasing the amount of excess can reduce the cost of the policy, but you all need to be able to afford it if you make a claim.

For group cover, you should make sure you have enough cover for the highest possible claim you could make – for example, if everyone's luggage went missing or an accident meant you all had to be repatriated. Make sure the whole party know any single item limits too – so they know the maximum that could be claimed for any one item.

You can find out more basic travel insurance information in our travel insurance guides. 

Where can you get cheap group travel insurance?

At Compare the Market, we search a wide range of providers to find travel insurance that suits you. Use our comparison service to compare travel insurance quotes for groups of up to 10 people.