At what age does your travel insurance become almost more expensive than the holiday trip itself?

Are older travellers an expensive group of wild indulgers in the local beverage, falling over and breaking off expensive pieces of anatomy?

In my experience it is not the Third Agers who are keeping the bar staff up half the night, though I must admit to knowing a few intrepid travellers who were not in the first flush of youth but who were usually the last to leave any party.

The reason I raise the question is a conversation I had recently (at a party, I must admit!) with a friend who is on the cusp of becoming a member of our exclusive band of Senior Citizens.

He travels a good deal in both his work and his spare time and consequently found the best way to get travel insurance was on a yearly multi-trip basis.

He had always found this to be both economic and convenient. Up until now that is. He will forgive me, I know, if I reveal that he is approaching 65 (as long as I don't reveal my sources) and he went, as usual, to renew his annual travel insurance in preparation for a forthcoming trip.

To his astonishment, not to mention annoyance, he found that it had rocketed in price, not because he was admitting to some terrible life-threatening disease from which he might have suffered in the year since he last insured himself for world travel, but because he was about to leave being 64 and become 65.

His health was just as good as ever, he was not proposing to shin up Everest in his lunch hour or wrestle with crocodiles as pre-prandial pleasure.

All he wanted to do was get on a plane and go from A to B, not passing Go or going to jail on the way.

Why was he more at risk today than he was yesterday? He'd become an old person overnight is why.

He is probably fitter than many of his younger friends but will now be faced with a very much larger bill, just at a time when he will have more time to travel for pleasure and enjoy himself.

When you are young you usually only have your annual holiday in which to go abroad so multiple travel insurance is not needed for a single journey.

If you are in a job which requires you to travel you will have no problem getting insurance anyway if you are young, unless you confess to having some dire illness which may end in precipitate death while abroad.

I can see the obvious necessity of ensuring travellers of any age are not likely to keel over in droves while away from the rigours of our beloved NHS but surely it should be on a case-by-case basis.

You can shop around and get a better deal than your travel agent will offer but you have to be sure of what you are getting for your money.

One of the best I have found on offer is from ARP 050, which is an association for people over the age of 50 and retired.

They insured me when I flew to New York a year or so ago without asking to be resuscitated when I mentioned that I was no longer in the first flush of youth (or even in the second flush, if I'm honest!).

I wonder what would happen if we took the offending firms to a tribunal on the grounds of unfair prejudice?

They are going to have to start being nice to us soon because there will be more of us than of them and we shall be their best customers. Tee-hee!