It always seems more straightforward and less risky to visit family abroad than to go out into the unknown and visit a new holiday destination. This may be true, but even in a familiar destination it is still advisable to take out single trip travel insurance to ensure that your holiday is as happy and as relaxing an experience as you hoped for. Without appropriate cover, it can turn into a hair pulling, stressful experience that may well need another holiday to get over!

Even if travel isn't a regular event in your life you shouldn't take anything for granted; travelling without insurance is an open opportunity for something to go wrong. It may seem simple and you could wonder what could actually go so wrong; after all, you're simply taking a flight to an airport you've visited a hundred times before and will be picked up by a family member and whisked to their home in the sun. But just consider for a moment what could happen if a gremlin gets into this idyllic situation.

Possible glitches

Let's say you've decided to keep the money you would have spent on single trip travel insurance to go into the Mojito fund, because, when gazing at the photographs of your incredibly lucky (and generous) family member's luxury villa at the beach resort of your dreams, you think, "What could possibly go wrong?" Well, now let's just imagine that you've precision-packed your suitcase so it complies with your baggage allowance; your pre-holiday shopping trips have provided you with the perfect poolside fashion and sophisticated clobber for the evenings; your expensive skin care and tanning lotions are decanted into suitable containers for your re-sealable plastic bags; you've arrived at the check-in desk and skipped happily through to departure. So far so good. Sipping your inflight gin and tonic you're relaxed and in the perfect holiday mood.

Then you arrive. You stand at the baggage carousel looking smugly at the less stylish baggage of your fellow passengers as one by one they pick up their bags and leave. You're still standing as the last one of them trundles by with their trolley. The carousel shudders to a stop with no sign of your lovingly packed bag. You find your way to the information desk, only to be told that all the bags have been unloaded from your flight, no, there are no bags lurking anywhere and, yes, they will call you when they find it.

This is about the point when you wish you'd foregone those extra pounds in the Mojito Fund and taken out that single trip travel insurance. Of course, your caring family member is still there to collect you and their villa is still as beautiful as it looked in the photographs; but you are walking round the pool in a borrowed 1970s one piece that you could quite happily fit two of you into, the only option for evening wear is a handkerchief hemmed paisley-print monstrosity, and the only toiletries on offer are are bar of soap and an ancient stick deodorant left over from someone else's holiday.

Of course, this is hopefully a worse case scenario but it happens! And let's just say that if your baggage takes two weeks to arrive or simply disappears into the ether, your holiday will not quite be the one you imagined. That simple act of taking out single trip travel insurance could have made the outcome so different.