The mind-blowing reasons Aussie travellers gave why they didn’t take out travel insurance

The latest travel insurance survey from The Insurance Council of Australia (ICA) and DFAT makes for some very interesting reading. As someone who’s been covering travel insurance for our website Mozo for over 10 years, the fact that 1 in 7 Aussie travellers are still heading overseas uninsured surprises me. I really thought the mantra ‘if you can’t afford travel insurance, then you can’t afford to travel’ had well and truly taken hold.     

Maybe I’m risk averse and financially conservative, but those horror stories of medical treatments costing more than a house deposit, car rental scrapes running into the thousands, and being massively out of pocket in tour and accommodation costs due to missed flight connections were enough to make anyone fork out the necessary dollars for cover. 

At the top of the list of reasons why people don’t take out travel insurance was they were travelling somewhere where they knew they would be safe. Also in the list of reasons were that they were only going on a short trip and their travel and luggage were inexpensive. 

What is striking about these answers is how optimistic people are that their holiday plans will, well, go to plan. Maybe they’re focussed on ‘good holiday vibes’ and not about what could possibly go wrong. But accidents, unforeseen events and general travel mishaps happen all the time.

In its list of most expensive travel insurance claims for 2024, travel insurer Southern Cross listed a $187,868 claim from a 44-year-old male who slipped on the ledge of the pool while on holiday and needed an air ambulance back to Australia.

And according to 1Cover Travel Insurance, even for a simple treatment to combat Bali belly, the average claim costs $1,500. 

  27% of those uninsured travellers from the ICA/DFAT report also said that they chose not to take out travel insurance because they didn’t think it was good value for money. 

In our own analysis done for the Mozo Experts Choice Travel Insurance Awards and 2025 Travel Insurance Trends report, we found that there can be a big difference in price for comparable cover between travel insurers. On a two week ski trip to Japan for example, we found a 40 year old could save as much as $191 by shopping around for cover^. 

This really highlights why it’s important to compare travel insurance quotes to meet your needs and budget. You don’t necessarily need all the bells and whistles, but even having just the basic hospital and medical cover is likely to cost less than $20 each day for someone without a pre-existing medical condition.      

So my question to anyone right now considering to roll the dice on not taking out insurance to save a few dollars, is it better to play it safe than sorry?