Aviva Travel Insurance Review

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Aviva sells travel insurance across four tiers — Basic, Silver, Gold and Lifetime — and the difference between them is far larger than most comparison tables make clear. Cancellation cover runs from £1,000 on Basic to £5,000 on Gold. Baggage runs from £500 to £2,500.

Those Basic figures are the ones to watch. A £1,000 cancellation limit will not cover a family package holiday, and £500 of baggage cover is roughly one suitcase. Aviva's own documentation describes Basic as the legal-minimum tier and advises against it for travel outside Europe.

If you buy Aviva on price alone and land on Basic, you have bought something quite different from what most people mean by travel insurance.

The tier gap in real numbers

Take a family of four on a £3,500 package holiday who have to cancel a fortnight before departure.

• Basic caps cancellation at £1,000. You are roughly £2,500 out of pocket.
• Silver caps at £3,000. You are £500 short.
• Gold caps at £5,000. You are covered.

The premium difference between these tiers is usually a fraction of that shortfall. This is the single most common way people discover their travel insurance was inadequate, and it happens at the claim rather than at purchase.

The practical rule: your cancellation limit must exceed the total non-refundable cost of your trip. Add up flights, accommodation and any pre-booked excursions before choosing a tier, rather than picking the cheapest and hoping.

No excess buy-down, which is genuinely unusual

Most UK travel insurers let you pay a little more to reduce or remove the excess. Aviva does not.

That leaves you with £150 per claim on Basic, £100 on Silver and £75 on Gold and Lifetime, with no way to buy it down. Note the excess is charged per claim, not per policy — so a trip where your luggage goes missing and you also need medical treatment can generate two separate excesses.

For small claims this matters more than the headline limits. A £220 replacement phone on a Basic policy nets you £70 after excess, which is rarely worth the paperwork. If you expect to make small claims, the Gold excess of £75 changes that arithmetic significantly.

Where Aviva is genuinely strong

Medical cover is not the weak point at any tier. Even Basic carries £5 million, and Gold carries £15 million. Serious medical repatriation is the scenario that bankrupts uninsured travellers, and Aviva covers it properly throughout the range.

No upper age limit on single-trip policies. That is a real differentiator. Many mainstream insurers cut off at 75 or 80, pushing older travellers towards specialist providers at higher prices. Aviva will write a single-trip policy at any age.

Pre-existing conditions are handled sensibly. Online medical screening, most conditions accepted with a premium loading rather than a flat refusal. Complex cardiac, oncology or respiratory histories may need additional underwriting, but the default posture is to quote rather than decline.

120 days on a single trip is longer than many competitors allow, which suits extended travel or a long winter stay abroad.

The annual multi-trip catch

Annual policies cap each individual trip at 31 days as standard. You can extend to 60 or 90 days by paying more, but the default catches people who assume an annual policy means unlimited duration.

The second catch is the age 79 cut-off for new annual policies, which sits oddly beside the unlimited age on single trip. If you are approaching 80 and travel several times a year, you will end up buying single-trip cover repeatedly — usually more expensive in total than an annual policy would have been.

Worth doing the arithmetic before assuming annual is cheaper: for two or three short European trips a year, single-trip policies at Gold level often cost less than an annual policy at Silver.

Figures were taken from each provider's own published terms on 16 August 2026. Variable rates can change at any time — confirm the current rate with the provider before applying.