The Costa Concordia shipwreck fiasco in late January 2012 raised many issues important to travellers, particularly in matters of personal and public safety.

While the Costa Concordia owners the Carnival Line will undoubtedly face massive insurance claims and lawsuits regarding professional liability, the whole tragic event poses larger questions to the general travelling public.

Questions such as:

What do I do if I don’t have traveller’s insurance?

What can my government representative do for me when I’ve lost my passport and other vital personal documents?

What do I do if I have no consular representation?

What do I do without cash or credit cards if they’ve been lost?

These are some of the most obvious questions that sensible frequent travellers ask themselves before they travel, not after.

Let’s examine these questions further.

Most cruise lines, travel agents and booking agencies either require or strongly advise that travellers venture from home with travel insurance. These days, travelling without a roundly comprehensive travel insurance policy is like asking for trouble.

The insurance industry overall is fairly well regulated, while countries such as Australia have publicly funded ombudsmen in place to deal with irregularities, complaints and claims’ disputes.

That said, it’s still a matter of buyer beware when purchasing travel insurance as some companies are more effective in processing legitimate claims than others. All customers are wisely instructed to read the fine print carefully.

NHT recommends its readers to take out comprehensive traveller’s insurance policy. Put simply, forewarned is forearmed.

Most good travel insurance policies include cover for loss of travel documents, credit cards and traveller’s cheques as well as luggage and personal effects. Most also include travel delay expenses (such as in the case of the aborted Costa Concordia voyage) including cover for misdirected luggage and personal effects. I’m thinking here of how many trips my bags have made, likely to better places than I’ve been, when airlines have sent my luggage somewhere without me.

Most good travel insurance policies include cover for emergency medical, hospital or dental expenses, some with added hospital cash allowance (for better food perhaps?) though policies vary widely. I remember asking one travel insurance representative what would happen if I broke my ankle in the USA and needed emergency medical care. She told me, off the record, to go to Canada.

For the record, I use www.travelinsurance.com.au as an online broker and find them to be reliable. No, the person who told me to go to Canada if I broke my ankle in the USA does not work for travelinsurance.com.au.

The implicit message here is to check the fine print again. Health care costs in countries such as the USA are extraordinarily high and your inexpensive travel insurance may not extend cover while travelling in countries like the USA. Pre-existing medical conditions such as diabetes, heart trouble, arthritis, HIV, etc are also taken into account when claims for damages are made. If you lie on your travel insurance form, your claim will not be honoured. Insurance fraud is a serious offence with a gaol term a distinct possibility if caught.

Like most personal insurance policies, travel insurance also typically includes cover in case of accidental death (yours), permanent disability, medical evacuation when necessary and loss of income.

A few travel insurance policies may also include cover for rental vehicle excess upon return of a damaged or crashed vehicle (or stolen).

In case of loss of passport and travel documents, whether stolen or lost, obtaining a police report is advisable. This in itself poses a multitude of problems. It isn’t difficult to imagine the drama inherent in securing a police report about a stolen passport in a country such as Ecuador or Zimbabwe where police corruption is rampant and quite possibly the police themselves are involved in the stolen passports market.

Where consular representation is available, go for it. Australia for instance, has diplomatic representation in most major countries where Australians frequently travel. What is commonly misunderstood in dealing with an Australian Embassy, High Commission or Consulate abroad is the limits of its powers and ability to assist in distributing emergency funds.

Australian diplomatic offices are not a drop in centres for dim witted travellers who’ve lost their money at a casino. They may be able to help if you’ve landed in a gaol or been arrested on charges that you don’t understand, but if the police have a legitimate complaint against you, breaking the country’s laws for instance, there’s little the Embassy, High Commission or Consulate can do other than to facilitate dialogue between you and your family back home or provide some emergency funds if the travel insurance policy doesn’t cover you for incarceration, which it won’t anyway you try to look at it.

They may be able to help with local legal representation and act as your lifeguard in a sea of trouble, but they cannot finesse you out of a drug deal gone wrong when you’ve been duped by gangsters smarter than you. Foreigners doing time in gaols from Indonesia to Vietnam to Thailand, where drug enforcement laws are much more strictly enforced than in Australia are just one case in point.

Erring on the side of caution, better to be safe than sorry, Australian travellers are advised to check out www.smarttraveller.gov.au Registering online before a trip may seem an unnecessary time-wasting precaution but the fact remains, once you’ve registered, it’s far easier to process a claim or seek assistance if disaster strikes. I wonder how many Australian passengers aboard the Costa Concordia registered online at Smart Traveller before they boarded their cruise on the normally safe Mediterranean Sea?

In countries where diplomatic representation is non-existent, your choices in securing help naturally become more limited though British Commonwealth countries often share diplomatic representation. For Australians, it’s best to approach a British High Commission or Consulate if disaster strikes. In Africa, where Australia has limited diplomatic representation, the British High Commission, Embassy or Consulate is the go-to place for help. I’ve had to visit British Embassies when applying for visas to various African nations as Australian representation was unavailable. EU passport holders have greater choices available as do most Americans. The USA appears to have an embassy in nearly every country on the planet, so do Japan, Russia and China. For Australians, check www.dfat.gov.au for a complete list of Australian Embassies, High Commissions and Consulates.

While travelling in Burkina-Faso during a meningitis epidemic I attempted to gain assistance (and vaccinations) from an Italian diplomatic office. I don’t hold an Italian EU passport so I was shown the door without so much as a ‘Ciao’. This is only one minor example of what can happen when nationality lets one down. I made it to Ghana and found help at a British Embassy instead.

Clearly, when things go wrong, without travel insurance, diplomatic representation and zilch funds at hand, you’re sunk.

But wait… that’s not entirely true. If your luck is completely down but you’re still in Australia (Melbourne to be precise), cashless, homeless and without family or friends, a charity called Travellers Aid Society can help.

Travellers Aid was founded nearly one hundred years ago, basically as a part of the Y.W. C.A. (Young Women’s Christian Association) in order to assist young women travelling to big cities such as London, New York, Chicago and Pittsburgh in search of work. Fresh off the trains, many became innocent victims caught up in the sex trade. With the advent of women’s suffrage in Australia, the USA and Britain along with World War 1, Traveller’s Aid organisations grew rapidly, primarily acting as refuges for women travelling on their own. Though a number of traveller’s aid organisations operate in the USA, the Australian based organisation has become a leader in the field of providing emergency relief to travellers visiting intrastate, interstate or from abroad. They now operate as a broad church while the historic religious connections have receded into the distant past when travellers relied on religiously based support in place of publicly supported support.

As of 2012, Traveller’s Aid Australia has grown into a charitable organisation that provides emergency relief to travellers who are stuck between a rock and a hard place, often without travel insurance or the possibility of government provided care.

Traveller’s Aid has become a leader in the field of providing support to travellers with disabilities and/or special needs. Think about it. You’ve lost your ticket, your money and your travel documents but you’re still in your home country and you don’t have travel insurance. And you’re in a wheelchair. Could life get any worse?

Traveller’s Aid support personnel are trained in basic first aid skills and dealing sensitively with people whose special needs and disabilities make travel more complicated. According to Traveller’s Aid CEO, Jodie Willmer, ‘Our main goal is to have people travel with confidence independently and with safety, dignity and respect.’

Apart from providing outstanding support services to people with disabilities and special needs, Traveller’s Aid also provides support for victims of domestic abuse on the run from abusive partners, migrants caught up in harsh bureaucratic systems while in the process of coping with complicated permanent or temporary visa applications.

They also assist lost student travellers recently arrived in Australia on study programmes, students in various forms of homelessness, students from refugee and migrant backgrounds and emergency accommodation and support for stranded, vulnerable, distressed, disadvantaged, homeless or persons at risk of homelessness.

Basically Traveller’s Aid provides services that travel insurance and diplomatic offices cannot. For people who fall between the gaps, they’re life savers.

I wonder how many passengers off the Costa Concordia could have benefited from the assistance of a local Italian Traveller’s Aid Centre?

See www.travellersaid.org.au for more details.