Annual travel insurance: is it worth buying in 2025? Whether it’s to the Philippines, Mexico, South Africa, Japan or any place where you ask us for help to plan your trip, there’s always one piece of advice that repeats itself regardless of the destination chosen: travel with travel insurance. As we tell you in our article about what is for us the best travel insurance, we have had to use it on many (too many) occasions. In the past we opted for standard policies that “expired” every few months but, since we live traveling and these new products have appeared, we now always carry long‑stay annual travel insurance.
Taking out annual travel insurance saves you up to 70 % compared to 90‑day policies.
Keep reading, because we’re going to tell you all the details since, if you’re thinking about packing your bags and traveling for a long time, this type of insurance will save you a lot of money.
What does an annual travel insurance policy cover?
Why get a long‑stay annual travel insurance instead of a standard travel insurance like the ones we’ve always used? Basically for the price and the big savings it represents for the traveler. We’re going to tell you all the reasons in detail, but here’s a little spoiler already: if you’re thinking of taking a long trip, don’t even think about taking out any insurance other than this type.
Most people travel between one and three weeks. The typical Monday‑to‑Sunday getaway to New York or perhaps a route across Japan from end to end over several weeks. That’s why, since the boom in the appearance of travel insurance, all insurers focused on offering policies for this type of customer. We all use them at some point, as they’re the perfect complement for the vast majority, but in recent years the number of travelers who set off to spend long months exploring the world with no return date started to grow significantly (us included).
If you came looking for the 5% discount on your travel insurance: CLICK HERE
IATI, the insurer we’ve been traveling with for more than 8 years, realized the needs of those new travelers who wanted to be covered without going broke paying for an expensive travel insurance and created the first annual travel insurance for travelers. Just as when you buy a pack of 24 sodas the unit price is much lower than buying just one, by taking out an annual travel insurance you pay far less for each insured day. For example, with a standard travel insurance it can cost about 4’5€ per insured day, whereas with an annual travel insurance you’ll pay around 1€ and change.
We’re always honest in each and every one of our articles, both when recommending a destination and when recommending a company and yes, even though we’ve always been happy with IATI’s standard insurance, when other companies started offering long‑trip options we studied them thoroughly. We don’t marry anyone.
We didn’t stick with the IATI worldwide annual travel insurance just because we already knew how this company works, but because its competitors were either much more expensive or, besides expensive, misleading. We’ll emphasize this later in the long‑stay insurance comparison.
Annual insurance vs 90‑day multi‑trip insurance
In this article we tell you in detail everything you need to know before taking out your annual travel insurance, but before starting the comparison, we want to clarify a couple of concepts that can sometimes be confusing.
After IATI created the first long‑stay travel insurance, the rest of the insurance companies also started to create similar products and thus began the festival of confusing names: Grandes Viajes, Gran Tour, Multiviaje, Annual…, sometimes making it difficult to know if when they sell an annual one they mean year‑long trips or several trips within a year. The thing, explained simply, is like this:
Annual Multi‑trip travel insurance
Multi‑trip travel insurance policies are NOT designed for the kind of long trips we’re talking about in this article. They are policies that, for one year, cover trips that are no longer than 90 days (60 days in the case of Intermundial, which offers less than its competitors).
They’re ideal for very frequent travelers who take several getaways a year but for whom travel is neither their way of life nor a long‑term project beyond three months.
Long‑stay travel insurance
Also called long‑stay travel insurance, these are policies that cover you on long trips. Ideal for those who live on the road or are going to take a long period to discover the world. It’s also the travel insurance for a round‑the‑world trip.
Who is annual travel insurance for?
Here are several cases in which it may interest you:
- If you’re looking for insurance for a round‑the‑world trip: A round‑the‑world trip is usually a journey of more than 6 months in which a large number of countries are visited. Many of the travelers who embark on this adventure know from the outset what their return date is. International annual insurance fits like a glove in this case and represents great savings on an already expensive trip.
- If you need travel insurance with no return date: This could be said to be our case. We never have a return date home. On certain occasions we pass through, but when we leave we say goodbye to family and friends without knowing when we’ll see each other again. We take out a one‑year travel insurance and completely forget about having to renew the policy every “x” months (as companies like Mondo force you to do).
- If you’re going to live abroad for a long period: An annual travel insurance is 100% what you need if, for example, you’re going to countries like New Zealand, Australia, Japan or Canada with a Working Holiday Visa to spend a year working and traveling. That was our case in 2014: we took out the annual insurance at the beginning of the trip and completely forgot about the matter for the rest of the experience. On the other hand, it’s also perfect for people like a friend of ours, who spends much of the year working between Singapore and other countries in Asia.
2025 comparison: IATI, Chapka, Mondo and Intermundial
Now, let’s get to the comparison of long‑stay travel insurance with the most popular companies currently on the market: IATI, Intermundial, Chapka and Mondo. For this, we’re going to quote a one‑year policy.
On a long‑term trip, besides passing through countless different destinations, we’re also going to do a lot of activities that by themselves are not covered under standard travel insurance. Snorkeling, for example, is considered by insurers to be an adventure sport.
Therefore, for an annual travel insurance it’s essential to have this type of coverage. Some companies, like Chapka or IATI already include it. Others, like Intermundial or Mondo, play a trick by showing a cheaper price since they don’t include this coverage that should be basic. Let’s see it clearly in the comparison of long‑stay annual travel insurance:
What is the best long‑stay travel insurance?
As you can see in the table, even without applying the 5% discount we offer you here, the cheapest annual travel insurance is IATI’s. In medical coverage there’s a tie, except for Intermundial, which offers a really low one, and Chapka, which raises it in the United States. That said, keep in mind that if you travel with Chapka and pass through the United States or Canada, not only does the coverage go up the price shoots up too! About 45€ PER WEEK.
Mondo offers the lowest coverage in Theft/Damage of luggage (800€), transport delay (200€), accommodation expenses abroad (800€) or rescue (2000€). In addition, its website is really misleading when it comes to showing prices. The ones they show you at the beginning don’t display the long‑stay travel insurance with adventure sports coverage, but if you activate it it only shows you the real price for the first three months! And it’s not just us saying it, they themselves acknowledge it in their chat.
Therefore, considering the high prices of the others and the coverage, it’s empirically proven that IATI Grandes Viajeros is by far the best annual travel insurance.
The only coverage in which it falls behind is Civil Liability. This serves, for example, to cover unintentional damage in hotels. If you trip and break a glass panel it’s covered; or if you damage the carpet. So, for you to need more than the 30.000€ offered by IATI, you’d have to mess up a lot and destroy everything you find in your path. In years of travel we’ve neither used this coverage nor met anyone who has.
Coverages of the long‑stay international annual travel insurance
Obviously, price is a very important factor when choosing one annual travel insurance or another (and you’ve already seen that IATI Grandes Viajeros wins), but, when it really matters, what we need when we truly have a problem is its coverage. These are the ones offered by what is for us the best long‑stay travel insurance:
Medical assistance abroad
This is a key point. Yes, we can have problems with our flights, suffer a theft or have the airline damage our luggage, but when it comes down to it, what we mostly look for in long‑stay travel insurance is that it protects us if we get sick or have an accident. IATI Long Stay covers you with up to 300.000€, which is the maximum covered by this type of insurance also in the rest of the companies in the comparison. In addition, 300.000€ of medical coverage in annual travel insurance doesn’t mean that over a year you “only” have that figure. It’s 300.000€ available each time you need to see a doctor.
For example, when one of us spent 3 weeks admitted to a hospital in Manila, the bill exceeded 22.000€. Upon leaving the hospital we again had 300.000€ to continue being treated (luckily it wasn’t necessary) if needed.
24‑hour assistance, in Spanish and free. Travel insurance app
A long‑term trip will probably pass through many countries where there may be language barriers — can you imagine being in a remote city in Russia and having to explain to someone that you have a terrible earache? With IATI Grandes Viajeros assistance is 24 hours and in Spanish (they’ve even arranged a translator for us in a hospital in Japan where the doctor, despite struggling to admit it, didn’t speak English). In addition, if you contact them by phone they’ll take care of reimbursing the cost of the call so it won’t cost you anything.
It also has an app from which to manage your claims.
No deductible
Maybe “travel insurance with a deductible” sounds like Greek to you. We’ll explain it in a few words: insurance with a deductible, for example, of 120€ means that they’re going to cover you from that amount up and you pay the rest. Mondo, Intermundial and Chapka have deductibles in some of their products and coverages. In Intermundial’s case, no matter that you’ve spent a whopping 900 euros on long‑stay travel insurance with adventure coverage, you’ll pay 120€ if a rescue is necessary.
IATI has no deductible, neither in its annual insurance nor in any of them.
Repatriation and early return
Hopefully you won’t need to use this coverage — we already have. After spending 3 weeks admitted to a hospital in Manila, the doctors recommended rest at home and IATI got to work to put us on two return flights in Business Class. How about that?
It also covers, in the event of death, transport back to Spain. The ever‑costly repatriation.
Our experience with international annual travel insurance
Unfortunately for us (and fortunately for being able to write this article with real testimonials) we’ve had to use the services of the medical insurance many times. We could write a whole book about it; in the article with IATI Seguros reviews you have several of our adventures, but we’re going to summarize here our most recent experience using long‑stay annual travel insurance. The process lasted about a month and, in short, it went like this:
- I started with a sore throat and fever: they quickly sent me to the nearest hospital and did X‑rays and a blood draw. The long‑stay travel insurance even paid for the medication for me.
- Things got worse: after feeling stabbing pains in my chest at night, I went back to the hospital and they told me I had some fluid in the lung and suggested I be admitted.
- Flight to Manila: I called IATI and told them that since it was something serious I preferred to go to the best hospital in the country. In less than half an hour they had already bought me a flight to Manila for that same morning.
- I arrive at the hospital in Manila and it seems that things are worse than initially thought. I’m admitted.
- From here I spend three weeks admitted during which:
- They run hundreds of tests
- I undergo two operations
- They pay for a flight for my mother and her accommodation
- They pay for a return flight for my mother
- They constantly call us from the annual travel insurance to know how I am at all times
- They even call my mother upon her return home to make sure she arrived safely after the flight
All this story translates into bills that together exceed 25.000 euros. Of which we didn’t pay a single cent. Once at home, as a sign of our deep gratitude for the great treatment received, my mother sent a nice gift to IATI’s offices 🙂
Discount on annual travel insurance – long‑stay
As we’ve told you before, besides being the cheapest long‑stay travel insurance with the best coverage, you can get it with a 5% discount if you purchase it by accessing from any of the links on this page.
If you already know us you’ll know this, but if you’ve arrived here looking for information to take out your long‑stay annual travel insurance we’d like you to know that nothing we recommend here is done for money. We could have discount links for Mondo, Chapka or Intermundial without any problem (they’ll give them to you if you ask), but it doesn’t seem honest to tell you, “hey! Take out whatever, but do it from my link.” IATI Grandes Viajeros is the best for us and we’ve shown you the reasons, which is why we only endorse this one. Affiliate links give a small percentage to blog creators, which in our case we invest back into the site itself. Thus, besides benefiting from the discount, you help us keep sharing travel information from the heart.
Get your annual travel insurance with a 5 % discount here:
If you have any questions, we’ll be happy to help you
