What is the best insurance for traveling to Iceland: tips, prices

One of the things that has caught our attention the most in our trip through Iceland with Polar Lands, is that every few kilometers we found small landing strips.

The guide told us that this has a very simple explanation, since there are hardly any hospitals, and in case of a health emergency, an evacuation by helicopter is necessary.

Iceland It is a very peculiar country because it is frozen for much of the year, as its name indicates.

Any remote area of ​​the world that is full of ice obviously has with it the very high risk of causing slips and accidents.

Insurance to cover travel incidents

No one is safe from this, since I have met guides on the trip who have had injuries due to slipping on the ice for which they have had to return to Spain.

We are talking about broken bones such as clavicle or femur when falling through ice, injuries that require helicopter evacuation If, for example, you are caught doing a trekking.

And better than the guides, no one knows the island, and if they suffer accidents, we can suffer them as well because no one is exempt from an inopportune slip.

Therefore, it is essential to have a travel insurance that covers the most diverse incidents.

Furthermore, if you are traveling as a family and something happens to a member, it is important that the insurance covers the cost of the companion; This is one of the clauses that we always look at.

From my own experience. It is something essential when you suffer an accident abroad.

Of course, you must also take into account the various incidents that you may suffer with your flight, such as its cancellation, with all the costs that entails.

For example, if your luggage is lost when you arrive at Iceland, and you have to start a route, you will have to buy clothes, and they are not cheap at all considering that you need quality thermal clothing that is very warm.

In the end, there are many incidents that can arise, and nowadays insurance is cheap enough to take the risk.

El best travel insurance that you can hire, that covers everything you can imagine, including its cancellation, it will cost you about 5 euros a day.

In our case we always travel with a IATI annual insurance to be covered from these and many other unforeseen events.

But in case you don't have some kind of annual travel insurance, we are going to explain to you what you need to hire and how to do it so that you can travel without fear of what may happen.

Is travel insurance necessary to travel to Iceland?

This is a question that is answered very quickly YES!!

Of course, in Iceland you can use the health card, but be careful, not that of your country, but the European sanitary card, so requesting it is a prior procedure that you must do, in order to receive it at your home before starting the trip.

But, in general, two types of trips must be distinguished, on your own o travel with agency.

Most of the trips made by travel agencies operating in Iceland They usually include insurance because it is mandatory and. above all, necessary.

If this is your case and you are going to travel with an agency, make sure it has including travel insurance and what are your covers, lest you get a surprise; To do this, ask for the insurance contract.

It is important that you review the clauses, because most of the problems that arise with insurance are due to hiring the cheapest one almost without looking at its coverage.

If your trip is not with an agency, you should also look at the clauses; Our advice is that you make a travel low cost to Iceland, or VIP trip, you must hire the best travel insurance and the one with the most coverage.

In our case, in addition to the aforementioned annual insurance that we have, given that the trip was with Polar Lands, which is an agency specialized in trips to the arctic, we were doubly covered.

What is healthcare like in Iceland?

One of the things we were interested in knowing in our recent trip to iceland was the quality of the health.

Being one of the most expensive countries in the world, we were curious to know if healthcare was also at the same level.

Such peculiar countries with such isolated areas always draw our attention to know how they organize themselves in matters such as healthcare.

Pay attention because there are curious things In this regard.

There are hardly any large hospitals, they are concentrated mainly in the capital Reykjavik, which is where the majority of the population resides.

Outside the environment of Reykjavik There is only one hospital in the north of the island, the Akureyri Hospital.

For this reason, as we have mentioned, the island is full of dirt runways for a possible helicopter landing if an evacuation is necessary.

Additionally, certain roads close at certain times. Seasons of the year and many times they are frozen, which complicates the issue of evacuations.

Obviously there are smaller centers for primary care, but it is very curious because if you go in the morning it is free, but if you go in the afternoon, they charge you.

So if you're going to get sick, do it in the morning.

You should also know that healthcare is free, but requires co-payments depending on the illness.

And finally, another curiosity is that since it is a very small population, the variety and number of important diseases is very low, so Icelandic doctors have to travel to other European countries with more populations to improve their training.

In Spain, with a population of approximately 46 million people, hundreds of different diseases are diagnosed every year, including rare diseases, and there are certain daily treatments in Spain that are hardly done in Iceland, with a population of 300.000 inhabitants.

That is why doctors from European countries are highly sought after and the best Icelandic doctors are those who have completed their training in other countries.

How much does travel insurance for Iceland cost?

Luckily, competition in insurance has meant that, over the years, insurance costs have decreased and coverage has increased.

To give you an idea, the price of insurance to travel to Iceland They range between 2,5 and 6 euros per day, absolutely ridiculous for the coverage it has.

If you take a 7-day trip, for example, the IATI's most comprehensive insurance, IATI Star, with cancellation it costs about 40 euros for the entire trip.

We recommend the IATI travel insurance, which offer telephone service 24 hours a day and, according to our experience, respond very quickly to any incident, without you even having to advance money.

When it comes to contracting your insurance, the most basic are the basic IATI e IATI standard, and except for the first, all have the cancellation option.

In any case, we always recommend insurance IATI Star, which is the most complete, and the economic difference, if you calculate it per day, is very small compared to basic insurance.

Also, if you are going to traveling to Iceland outside the summer season, this interests you.

It is important that it covers a possible flight delay and includes the cancellation clause because there are times when the airport has to be closed due to bad weather.

On the other hand, it is very possible that your flight includes stopovers, and delays occur, you run the risk of missing your connection.

The most complete insurance, such as IATI Star, include these clauses, another reason why you have to have good insurance and not the cheapest one.