When you book a trip on a travel comparison website, you are usually offered many optional services, including one called a vacation waiver (also called "travel protection" or "trip protection" by some providers). A vacation waiver is usually a low-cost add-on and only requires you to check a box. Many people simply select the checkbox and move on, believing that they have purchased comprehensive protection against anything that could go wrong regarding their trip. However, a vacation waiver is not the same as thing as travel insurance, and you should be careful not to confuse the two.
Travel Insurance
Travel insurance is offered from a highly regulated insurance company and offers a wide variety of benefits such as trip cancellation, trip interruption, emergency medical, trip delay, baggage delay, loss of checked luggage, emergency medical evacuation, AD&D, and many more.
Vacation Waiver
On the other hand, vacation waivers are usually designed to cover change fees and cancel charges by the travel website, as well as provide some form of reimbursement for changes to your airline ticket—which comes in the form of airline credit, not cash. That means that you would be locked into using that same airline for any future flights. Moreover:
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Such waivers would not help you recover the cost of "non-changeable" airline tickets; a credit voucher from an airline may also be subject to additional terms and conditions of the airline.
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It would not provide any coverage related to changing ticket prices, in case you need to travel during peak season.
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Vacation waivers are available from online booking sites only at the time you purchase your trip – travel insurance is available for purchase through the comparison website at any time up to the day before your departure date.
In most cases, a vacation waiver isn’t insurance, but simply an add-on product that allows you to change or cancel your trip. The travel booking website will waive cancellation fees and provide you with travel credit for a future trip on the same airline. In other words, even though a vacation waiver is cheaper than full-fledged travel insurance, it is because it provides a very narrow area of coverage under very limited circumstances.
For these reasons, it is always recommended to purchase an actual travel insurance policy that meets your specific requirements, rather than just hit the checkbox of only one product without a thorough understanding of what it covers.
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