Travel Insurance Can Offer Financial, Emotional Relief : Security: Choosing the right plan, though, can be confusing given the range of available coverage.

NEW YORK —  While most vacations come off without a hitch, even the best-laid plans can unravel into a traveling nightmare.

You arrive at a Swiss mountain resort; your skis arrive in Singapore. Your prepaid trip to Florida is scrapped after the tour operator goes belly up. Your traveling companion is attacked by a rhinoceros on a Kenyan safari.

Travel insurance can provide financial, as well as emotional, relief.

But choosing the right plan can be confusing given the wide range of available coverage, from protection against rainy vacations to emergency transit from remote parts of the world. For many people it may be an unnecessary expense.

“Ninety-nine percent of the people who take the insurance never need it. Those who do are extremely grateful to have it,” said Ada M. Brown, owner of Seaside Travel House Inc. in Long Beach, which sells travel insurance to less than 10% of its leisure-travel customers. “It’s really a gray area.”

A lot, of course, depends on how much travelers have invested in a trip, their approach to risk-taking and how deep their pockets are.

Brown said she advises most of her customers to skip the insurance unless they’re visiting an exotic destination with primitive medical facilities or buying an expensive, non-refundable travel package, such as a cruise.

Both medical and cancellation coverages are available directly from an insurance company or through travel and insurance agents, who receive hefty sales commissions.

Trip cancellation and interruption coverage--the most popular among the travel insurance products--protects against losses if unforeseen events disrupt a scheduled trip. That could mean having to bail out of a cruise because your 6-year-old comes down with chicken pox.

Such policies, sold separately in most states, usually cost between $5 and $5.50 per $100 of coverage. Mutual of Omaha’s Tele-Trip Co. charges a bit more, $6.50 per $100, but unlike many competitors sets no limit on how much coverage can be bought.

Standard comprehensive plans contain cancellation coverage, along with flight and baggage insurance and accidental medical, medical evacuation and travel assistance coverage, among other things. The total cost depends upon the length of a trip, who’s covered under the plan and whether any “extras” are included.

Tele-Trip, for instance, charges $93 for standard family coverage on a trip lasting between four and nine days. The same plan for individuals costs $53. Travel Guard International of Stevens Point, Wis., charges between 7% and 8% of the total cost of a trip for its packages.

Consumer groups and travel experts urge all travel insurance buyers to read the fine print.

Most policies, for instance, won’t pay for expenses associated with pre-existing medical conditions. Others specifically exclude coverage if a tour operator defaults or if you’re traveling where there is political unrest.

“If you’re going to Bosnia-Herzegovina, we’d tell you we wouldn’t want to write your insurance policy,” said Tom Zavadsky, executive vice president for sales and marketing at Travel Guard.

J. Robert Hunter, president of the National Insurance Consumer Organization in Alexandria, Va., said that most individuals probably already have more insurance coverage than they realize. The whole point of buying more, he said, is to protect yourself from severe financial stress, not inconveniences like a rainy vacation day.

“I think most people don’t need these kinds of (travel) policies. Most of them are sold on the basis of fear and ignorance,” Hunter said.

As a first line of protection, he and other experts suggest that travelers pay for everything with a credit card.