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A moment of silence for the content of this post before Sept. 22,2019. Such high praises filled this URL, with anecdotes and data points about the value of Citi trip protection.
Citi credit card travel insurance used to be the envy of all other credit cards. Top-notch travel accident insurance, worldwide rental car insurance, trip cancellation and interruption protection, baggage delay insurance, and much more. Citi even offered the best trip delay insurance (benefits kicked in after just a three hour delay!).
All of this is now gone. Citi cards no longer come close to making the list of the best travel insurance credit cards.
Citi credit card travel insurance eliminated
Citi has removed all of the following benefits from their travel cards:
- Worldwide car rental insurance
- Trip cancellation and interruption protection
- Worldwide travel accident insurance
- Trip delay protection
- Baggage delay protection
- Lost baggage protection
- Roadside assistance dispatch service
- Travel and emergency assistance
And that’s just the travel related benefits they’ve amputated from their suite of travel credit cards.
We shout from the rooftops that travel benefits are the meat and potatoes of travel credit cards. It’s disheartening to see Citi remove these valuable perks from their products. Their cards still have excellent welcome bonuses, but this will certainly affect the amount of people who choose to retain the card for multiple years.
If you’re looking for travel insurance, read our post on the best travel insurance credit cards. Citi cards are not the ones you’re looking for. Instead consider cards like The Platinum Card® from American Express or the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card, which come with benefits like lost baggage insurance, trip delay and interruption/cancellation insurance.
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Great post, its one of those benefits you hope you never have to use, but nice to see it is there. I might of missed it, but can you confirm that the Citi Costco card would also have this same benefit?
cancelled our cruise due to a family member w/ stage 4 metastised cancer. Will our CITI card give us our money back- reserved trip on Sept. 9 and cancelled last week.
I charged our vacation rental on my citi Costco card do I need to by insurance Incase illness stops us from going or does my card cover it
Hi Jane,
Sounds like you might be referring to trip cancellation/trip interruption coverage. I think it might depend on when you made the purchase. As I recall, there was some recent news about Citi removing many travel-related benefits/protections on their cards effective September 22. So depending on when you made your purchase, there’s a chance that you may not be covered for the scenario you’re referring to.
Here is one of our recent articles about the Citi cards losing perks:
https://millionmilesecrets.com/news/citi-credit-card-losing-perks/
I got a first ticket (NYC to ATH) using Citi points, and now I want to get a second ticket (ATH to some island) with my Citi card. These are separate tickets. My connection in ATH would be 1.5 hrs but I will have 3 children with me! If I miss my connection in ATH (again, these will be separate tickets), will I be able to use my Trip Cancellation insurance?
Hi Doomx! It would depend on the reason you miss the fight.
Citi has a full list of the valid reasons here on starting on page 14 (note that the effective date is May 2016 which appears to be the most recent copy for now). So any of these reasons would be covered by trip cancellation insurance:
http://i.info4.citi.com/wpm/100164/PDF/Guide1.pdf
Bought ticket on Sprint air with my citi world elite card ( thank you) flight was delayed 6 hours and eventually cancelled due to bad weather at destination, no other flight available that evening, and since Spirit air does not have delay flight to that destination , the next available flight was to be 3 days later. We rented a car and drove 12 hours to get home. Filed a claim with Citi card for the rental car/meals along the way, my delay benefit and claim was denied stating that my flight was not delayed for more than 12 hours. was advised if I stayed at the airport and waited 3 days, they would have paid for my 3 nites hotel because it will then fall within the 12 hours rule. My god!!!! my flight was delayed 6 hours, but then it was cancelled!!!! Why would I want to stay 3 extra nites just to wait for their flight? Called back to ask for customer relations dept and before my call was transferred, operator suggested to re file my claim under cancellation protection, and 24 hours later, my claim was approved…..What incompentent claim adjuster Citi card has……
I bought an one way ticket from India to US for my Wife and Daughter using Thank you points (Thank-you Travel Center) and Mother in law using Prestige Card (3rd party travel website) .
All three were traveling in the same flight under 2 reservations. Their final leg of AA flight was delayed at ORD by 10 hours.
AA provided Hotel, Dinner, Breakfast and shuttled the to and from the Airport. Except for the inconvenience of delay my family did not spend anything.
Filed a claim with Prestige travel claims and received $100 as a final settlement without even providing (neither did they request for) any receipts.
My wife and I were traveling extensively this summer and used this benefit. We were supposed to go to Istanbul for a couple of days but there was the bombing at IST and the attempted coup shortly before our scheduled arrival. We had paid for the ticket from TLV to IST using our Prestige card and then had used the Prestige to pay for the taxes on our business class award from IST to JFK (which I was bummed to be cancelling).
I called them while in Israel to initiate the claim. They covered all of our interrupted travel. This included the ticket from TLV to IST, meals and supplies during the two days we were supposed to be in Istanbul, our hotel in Tel Aviv, since that is where we went instead. The crazy thing about it was we had used points to cover the hotels in Istanbul and cancelled those without issue, but Citi covered us to pay for the hotel in Tel Aviv wish cash, which they told me they would do in advance. Additionally, they covered the cost of additional miles purchased to cover the award ticket back to the US, since Israel and Turkey are in different award zones for Aeroplan. So I bought the additional 50,000 Aeroplan miles with my Prestige card, earned triple points, and they reimbursed me. In all we spent about $2000 that we never spent in the first place and Citi sent a check within two weeks of the completed travel for all of it. They essentially paid for us to stay at the beach for two days.
I put all of my airfare transactions on the Prestige because of how generous this benefit is. They covered the annual fee for almost five years with this one experience, and that doesn’t even include the travel credit.