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21-day money-back guarantee 24-hour medical assistance |
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Canstar Outstanding Value Winner 24/7 Emergency Assistance. |
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This year, four providers earn Canstar’s Outstanding Value Travel Insurance Awards, across our four award categories
Canstar’s research team awarded 1Cover its International and Seniors awards this year in recognition of 1Cover’s outstanding value. Our researchers noted that across the two traveller categories, 1Cover offers competitive pricing with strong levels of insurance cover.
Medical and luggage protection are stand-out features of 1Cover’s policies, and the standard inclusion of pre-existing medical conditions further enhances value, particularly for older travellers.
This is the second year in a row that Air New Zealand has won our Trans-Tasman Outstanding Value Award, due to it maintaining competitive pricing for travel to Australia across all the consumer profiles in our research.
Air NZ’s insurance provides a high level of cover, with excess flexibility features, including a lower standard excess and a nil excess option, which are less common in the market and give travellers greater control over potential claims costs.
Southern Cross has won our previous travel insurance awards on multiple occasions. However, this year it excels by earning a clean sweep of award wins across all our Outstanding Value Award categories.
Southern Cross maintains its International and Cruise awards by continuing to offer high levels of cover at competitive prices. Our research team noted that over the past year Southern Cross has offered strong premium reductions, particularly for couples and families traveling internationally or on cruises, which has strengthened their overall value and, this year, earned the insurer our Trans-Tasman Award.
Awarding Southern Cross its Seniors Award, our researchers again commended Southern Cross’s premium reductions, particularly for seniors travel to the United Kingdom, Fiji and Australia.
Southern Cross is also the latest winner of our Most Satisfied Customers Travel Insurance Award.
Over the past year, Tower’s pricing has remained stable, which has allowed it to retain its Trans-Tasman and Cruise Awards.
Our researchers noted that Tower’s travel insurance cover includes a wide range of events and activities as standard. And as a mainstay of the NZ insurance industry, Tower offers a high level of support to its customers, including a wide selection of application options.
Canstar’s Travel Insurance Star Ratings score travel insurance providers and their products. Each insurance product is assessed and scored for its price and array of features, and the best products receive our prestigious 5-Star Ratings.
For this year’s Travel Insurance Star Ratings, our expert research panel compared 40 travel insurance products from 16 providers across a range of different profiles:
Insurance providers assessed:
Insurance profiles: Single, Couple, Family, Mature Single.
To be eligible for our ratings, each product has to meet certain basic requirements, including cover for:
For ease of comparison, the different insurance products are judged across three product types:
On the back of our Star Ratings research, we award the best travel insurance providers and products our prestigious Outstanding Value Travel Insurance Awards across four award profiles:
To be eligible for an Outstanding Value Award, insurance providers have to meet extra policy requirements, above those required for a 5-Star rating. These include:
Southern Cross Travel Insurance is rated No.1 for customer satisfaction
Rather than judged and awarded by Canstar’s expert team of researchers, our Most Satisfied Customers Travel Insurance Award is based 100% on consumer feedback from everyday Kiwi travellers.
For this year’s Most Satisfied Customers Travel Insurance Award, we talked to 1412 Kiwis who had purchased travel insurance in the previous 12 months and asked them to rate their choice of travel insurance providers.
The insurance customers in our survey were asked to rate their satisfaction with their insurance providers from zero to ten – where zero is extremely dissatisfied and ten is extremely satisfied – across the following categories:
Of the nine travel insurance providers rated in our survey (see below), Southern Cross was the standout brand. Across the six award categories, it earned five top 5-Star ratings, plus a great 4-Star rating for cost, and was the only provider to achieve a 5-Star rating for Overall Satisfaction.
Southern Cross’s award win goes hand-in-hand with its full set of Outstanding Value Travel Insurance Awards, across our Cruise Travel, International Travel, Seniors Insurance and Trans-Tasman categories.
Travel insurance provides financial cover for emergencies, accidents or loss that might occur to you or your belongings while you are travelling either domestically or internationally.
Comprehensive travel insurance covers not only your possessions but, more importantly, it will also provide financial assistance for medical treatments that you could require while away from New Zealand.
The New Zealand government website SafeTravel recommends travel insurance for anyone taking a trip away from home, especially overseas.
If you don’t have travel insurance and you lose your luggage, have an accident, medical emergency, or legal incident, you could face huge bills.
Cancelled flights and hotel accommodation can leave you out of pocket by thousands of dollars, but medical expenses can be even more expensive. If you suffer a health emergency while overseas, it could end up costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, especially if you need to be brought back to New Zealand for treatment.
However, if you have adequate travel insurance, you can travel confidently knowing you can get financial help in an emergency.
There are three main types of travel insurance cover policies:
Domestic travel insurance policies usually cover you for events such as:
Domestic travel insurance usually doesn’t cover you for:
International travel insurance policies usually cover you for events such as:
International travel insurance usually doesn’t cover you for:
Cruise travel insurance is sometimes sold as a separate insurance product, or as an add-on level of cover. Comprehensive cruise insurance generally covers possessions, personal liability and medical cover, including evacuation at sea.
It’s worth noting that some cruise ships won’t let you board without cruise-specific insurance, so you might want to check with your holiday provider before booking to see what cover you need. Government or private health insurance may not cover you while on a cruise, even in New Zealand waters.
Medical-only policies: as the name suggests, such policies only provide cover for medical treatments, and often personal liability, and not for a traveller’s possessions. Due to their limited cover, these policies are generally cheaper than comprehensive policies.
Multi-trip policies: provide cover for multiple trips within a set period, and can cover multiple destinations. For frequent travellers, a multi-trip policy can work out cheaper than purchasing individual single-trip policies.
Working overseas policies: offer the benefits of standard travel insurance policies, but with extended timeframes suited to those spending long periods living and working overseas.
NB: No travel insurance policy will cover you for every possible eventuality while you’re away, so it’s always important to read your policy’s terms and conditions carefully to discover the full extent of your cover. If you have any doubts about your level of cover, talk to your insurance provider before you travel.
The short answer is yes. If you’re travelling to Australia, it’s a good idea to purchase travel insurance to cover your possessions and any possible medical-related costs you might incur while overseas.
While Kiwis are eligible for free emergency hospital treatment in Australia under our governments’ Reciprocal Health Agreement, New Zealanders visiting Australia still have to pay for non-hospital treatments, such as visits to a doctor or medical centre, and repatriation, which is a very expensive process.
In addition to organising travel insurance, before you leave:
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Travel Insurance - October 11th
If you are planning a trip overseas or within New Zealand, travel insurance is an important consideration. But what is travel insurance and what cover does it provide? We look into different travel insurance policies and…
– Read moreProducts from the following travel insurance providers were rated for Canstar’s 2025 Travel Insurance Star Ratings:
To qualify for our Most Satisfied Customers Award, a travel insurance brand must receive at least 30 responses in our consumer research, so not all brands available in the market are compared in our survey. The brands rated in our latest award survey are listed below in order of best overall satisfaction:
The travel insurance customers in our survey rate their satisfaction with their travel insurance providers from zero to ten, where zero is extremely dissatisfied and ten is extremely satisfied. Brand satisfaction is rated by respondents on the following criteria:
The winner is the travel insurance provider that receives the highest Overall Satisfaction rating once all the scores from the Overall Satisfaction criteria are combined and averaged.
The outcomes reported in our ratings are measured via accredited research panels managed by Pureprofile.
