Ski travel insurance Ireland: what piste, off-piste and rescue cover really pays, from €31.08 a week

Yes. Ski travel insurance is a travel policy with the winter-sports option switched on, and it is what pays mountain search and rescue, emergency hospital care and the flight home after a fall. From Ireland it starts at €31.08 for a week in the Alps with that option on.

Ireland has no ski terrain of its own, so every ski holiday booked here is a foreign trip and every slope accident happens in a system that bills you. That is the part Irish skiers get wrong: the resort does not absorb the cost of getting you off the mountain, and your European Health Insurance Card does not pay for it either. The European Commission says so in plain words, and its own worked example is a skier rescued by the French services.

The figure that decides a ski policy is therefore not the premium. It is the mountain search and rescue ceiling, and across the four plans an Irish resident can buy with winter sports on it ranges from €4,000 to €25,000 per event. That is a six-fold difference on the one guarantee a skier is most likely to use, and it does not track the price: the second-dearest of the four has the lowest rescue limit of all.

We priced every plan available to an Irish resident for a week in the French Alps on 28 October 2026, with the winter-sports option requested, and read the policy wording behind each one. Four plans quote with that option on. Eleven quote without it, which is the trap: a cheap policy that covers your trip will not necessarily follow you onto a piste. Ski cover is one slice of travel insurance from Ireland, and it is the slice with the most fine print.

Go Protect is the strongest winter-sports cover for most Irish skiers, because its risky-sports extension lifts mountain search and rescue to €25,000 per event and names off-piste skiing and snowboarding in the wording itself. WorldSecure Platinum is the cheapest route onto a piste and adds cancellation cover, with a €5,000 rescue ceiling and a hard stop at 65.

Four plans returned a quote for an Irish resident with the winter-sports option on: WorldSecure Platinum, Go Protect, SafeTrip Tourism and Safe Extreme. We ranked them on the order a skier actually needs, which is rescue first, then emergency medical and repatriation, then equipment and cancellation. SafeTrip Tourism carries the highest medical ceiling of the four at €500,000, pays hospital bills at the first euro with no excess and has the lowest rescue limit at €4,000. Safe Extreme matches Go Protect on rescue per event at €25,000 but stops selling at 49 and carries no cancellation cover at all, which rules it out for most ski holidays booked months ahead.

Recommended for youA. Fruchard · Co-Founder & Travel Insurance Expert

Antoine's take

If you ski, the guarantee you are really buying is the one that gets you off the mountain and into a hospital without you handing over a card. Go Protect does that best for an Irish skier: its risky-sports extension raises mountain search and rescue to €25,000 per event, it names off-piste skiing and snowboarding among the activities it covers, it pays €300,000 of emergency medical care in Europe and repatriates you at actual cost, and it is the only one of the four that will sell you €3,000 of ski-equipment cover as an option. It is mid-priced in our shortlist and costs less than a day’s lift pass. If you stay on the marked runs, are under 65 and can live with a €5,000 rescue ceiling, WorldSecure Platinum is the cheapest of the four and still refunds a cancelled holiday. Two honest caveats: none of these plans refunds an unused lift pass, ski hire or lessons as a benefit in its own right, and the winter-sports option has to be on the policy before you leave Ireland, because nobody adds it after a fall. The cards below show today’s price for your own dates.

Go ProtectUnderwritten by Mutuaide

From€49.50

Included coverage

Recreational sportsIncluded

Search & rescue€10,000

Emergency medical expenses€300,000

Emergency medical evacuation & repatriationCovered in full

See all 23 benefitsGet a quote

Personalized quote · no obligation

WorldSecure PlatinumUnderwritten by MGEN

From€30.25

Included coverage

Recreational sportsIncluded

Search & rescue€5,000

Emergency medical expenses€300,000

Emergency medical evacuation & repatriationCovered in full

See all 23 benefitsGet a quote

Personalized quote · no obligation

Real quotes for a ski trip: 1 traveller aged 28, 7 days in France (16 to 23 January 2027), departing from Ireland, winter-sports option requested. HelloSafe data, August 2026. Only these two plans accept the winter-sports option for an Irish resident. Go Protect prices a couple at the same rate as a solo skier, so from two people up it becomes the cheaper of the two. Your price depends on your age, trip length and destination.

Ski travel insurance costs €31.08 for a week in the French Alps on WorldSecure Platinum and €50.85 on Go Protect, for one skier aged 28 leaving from Ireland with the winter-sports option on. Two skiers in Austria pay €62.15 or €101.70, and a family of four in France €124.30 or €183.06.

Three of the price drivers Irish skiers expect turn out not to matter. The resort country is one: the same skier pays €31.08 for France, Italy, Austria, Switzerland or Andorra, because these plans price Europe as one zone. Trip length barely matters at the short end either, since a three-day weekend in the Alps costs exactly the same €31.08 as a full week on a minimum premium. It is only past a week that the clock starts: fourteen days takes WorldSecure Platinum to €46.62.

What does move the price is the option itself, and the two plans treat it very differently. Switching winter sports on costs €1.42 on WorldSecure Platinum, which goes from €29.66 to €31.08. On Go Protect it costs €21.24, from €29.61 to €50.85, and that is what buys the €25,000 rescue ceiling and the named off-piste cover. Age is the other driver, and it works as a cliff rather than a slope: the premium is flat to 75 on Go Protect and then steps to €75.03 at 80.

Irish skiers who go more than once a season usually start pricing multi trip travel insurance, which is what the market here calls the cover sold elsewhere as annual travel insurance. It is worth knowing before you shop that none of our multi-trip plans accepts the winter-sports option: the policies that do accept it are all single-trip. Our multi-trip cover quotes at €276.85 and €318.66 a year for a traveller of 35, so the arithmetic is simple enough. Take multi-trip cover for your city breaks and single-trip ski cover for the week on snow, which at €31.08 to €50.85 a trip stays cheaper than most season passes for anyone skiing twice a winter or less.

Winter-sports cover is an extension that removes the sliding-sports exclusion from a travel policy, so the medical, rescue and repatriation guarantees follow you onto the slopes. Where it stops following you depends on one line in the wording, and on the four plans we read that line is about leaving the marked runs, not about the sport.

The ceilings behind that line are what a claim actually pays, and they are not where the price would put them.

You do, unless a search and rescue guarantee pays it for you. In France the commune bills the rescue by zone under a tariff it votes each season, Austrian statutory health insurance reimburses nothing for sport and leisure rescues, and in Italy the charge is set region by region. Tignes states it plainly on its own safety pages: there is a charge for rescue services.

French resorts publish those tariffs, which makes them the one place in the Alps where a skier can see the bill before the accident. Two official schedules for the current season show both the shape of the pricing and the size of the jump the moment you leave the marked runs.

Read those two columns next to the ceilings above and the shortlist sorts itself. A straightforward piste rescue sits in the hundreds, which almost any ceiling absorbs. An off-piste rescue starts at €740 to €869 before a helicopter is in the air, and a private helicopter is billed at actual cost, which is why €4,000 and €5,000 ceilings run out and €25,000 does not. Add a search or an avalanche operation, charged by the hour per rescuer and per machine, and the gap stops being theoretical.

Austria works differently and is less forgiving. Rescue costs, and the cost of bringing you down to the valley, are excluded from statutory reimbursement for sport and leisure accidents under section 131(4) of the ASVG, so the bill arrives with the injured skier rather than with a health fund. Italy charges region by region, which means the same broken leg is billed differently in one valley than in the next, and we will not print a single national figure because there is not one.

The flight home is the largest single item on a serious ski claim, and it is the one all four plans handle at actual cost rather than against a ceiling. That is worth knowing, because it is the number most skiers worry about and the one they are least exposed on. The exposure is the rescue, the hospital and the excess.

What to do in the first hour after a fall

1. Ring the assistance line before you agree to any transport. The number is on your certificate and the line is open 24 hours a day on all four plans.
2. Let the assistance doctors authorise the hospital. Go Protect and SafeTrip Tourism both bill the hospital directly, SafeTrip Tourism from the first euro with no excess, but the call is what triggers it and what stops you paying up front.
3. Get written proof of the rescue from the piste service, naming the zone it was charged under. The French tariffs above are zone-based, so the zone is the invoice.
4. Keep every receipt: sledge, helicopter, ambulance, clinic, scans and anything you pay for at the pharmacy.
5. Check whether the clinic that treated you is private. The European Commission is explicit that the European Health Insurance Card does not cover private healthcare, and a good share of Alpine resort clinics are private.
6. Declare the claim as soon as you are home, inside the deadline printed on your certificate, and attach the rescue proof to it.

The European Health Insurance Card does not cover mountain rescue, repatriation or private healthcare. The European Commission puts it directly: your EHIC will not help you with rescue and repatriation, and search and rescue costs are not covered by the card. Its own illustration of the gap is a skier rescued by the French services.

What the card does is real and worth carrying. It gives an Irish skier the same rights to public healthcare as somebody insured in the country of stay, which is why a trip to a public hospital in France, Austria or Italy does not start with a credit card. What it does not do is turn that into free treatment, because "the same rights as a local" means the same charges a local pays, and in none of these three countries is that nothing. Our full guide to the EHIC for Irish residents sets out what the card reimburses.

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  Mountain search and rescue: Excluded in every EU country. This is the single biggest cost of a ski accident and the card pays none of it.
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  The flight or ambulance home: Repatriation is outside the card in every country. Travel cover handles it at actual cost on all four plans we read.
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  Private clinics: The card only works with providers inside the public system, and many Alpine resort clinics are not.
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  The charges a local pays: Co-payments, hospital day charges and the share a resident’s own top-up cover would meet stay with you.
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  Anything in Switzerland beyond emergency care: Andorra is outside the scheme altogether, so the card does nothing in either place for a holiday booked there.

The Department of Foreign Affairs gives Irish travellers the same advice from the other direction: take out comprehensive travel insurance including medical cover before you travel, because the State cannot pay your medical or repatriation bills. On a ski trip that advice and the card fit together rather than compete. Carry the card for the public hospital, and hold the policy for the rescue, the private clinic, the excess and the flight home.

Your skis and board are covered as baggage on all four plans, between €1,500 and €2,000, and only Go Protect sells dedicated ski-equipment cover, at €3,000 per insured with a €50 excess. No plan among the four refunds an unused lift pass as a benefit in its own right.

The distinction matters more than the ceilings suggest, because baggage cover and equipment cover answer different questions. Baggage pays if your skis are lost or stolen in transit or at the hotel, subject to a per-case excess of €15 to €30 and a valuables sub-limit that on Go Protect is €750 per person. It is not written for gear broken on the mountain or for hire kit you are liable for. The sports-equipment option is, which is why it is the one line on this page where paying more than the cheapest plan buys something a skier can point at.

The lift pass is the honest gap. None of the four wordings lists a ski-pass refund, so a resort closing its lifts for want of snow, or an injury on day two, does not trigger a payout labelled as such. What does respond is the stay-interruption guarantee, which refunds the unused land arrangements of a trip cut short on a pro-rata basis: €2,500 per person on Go Protect, capped at €14,000 per file and with a €30 excess, and €6,000 on SafeTrip Tourism. WorldSecure Platinum and Safe Extreme carry no stay-interruption cover at all, so a holiday abandoned halfway is simply over on those two.

Two smaller lines are worth knowing before you pack. Delayed bags are paid on Go Protect after 12 hours at €150 per person, capped at €400 per file, and on SafeTrip Tourism only after 24 hours, which is the difference between arriving to hired skis on the first morning or the second. And electronics, which on a ski trip means the camera and the phone, sit inside the baggage ceiling as valuables on Go Protect rather than having their own limit, while SafeTrip Tourism caps them separately at €750 and Safe Extreme at €1,000.

Four clauses decide a ski claim: whether the winter-sports option was on the policy before departure, when you bought the cancellation cover, your age on the day you bought it, and whether you have a condition the plan treats as pre-existing. Everything else is detail.

The cancellation timing is the one that catches Irish skiers who book late. Go Protect only sells cancellation cover within 48 hours of booking the holiday, or failing that up to 20 days before departure, and a policy taken out inside 30 days of leaving carries a five-day waiting period during which nothing that happens is covered. Its maximum stay is 90 consecutive days. Buy the cover when you book the chalet, not when you remember it in January.

Pre-existing conditions split the shortlist cleanly. WorldSecure Platinum does not cover them, which is a significant thing to know on the cheapest plan of the four, while Go Protect, SafeTrip Tourism and Safe Extreme all do. If a known condition is in play, the relevant reading is our guide to senior travel insurance, which goes through how each plan handles declared conditions.

The excesses are small individually and worth adding up, because they all land on the same claim. Go Protect takes €30 per claim on medical costs, €25 per suitcase on baggage, €50 on the sports-equipment option and a flat €150 on liability. WorldSecure Platinum takes €30 on baggage and €100 on liability. SafeTrip Tourism charges €30 on medical care but nothing at all if you are admitted to hospital, which on a ski injury is the likely outcome.

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  The mountain search and rescue ceiling: Treat €5,000 as the floor for an Alpine week and €25,000 as what the Go Protect extension pays per event. Off-piste rescues start at €740 to €869 before a helicopter.
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  The winter-sports option, ticked before you travel: It is what removes the sliding-sports exclusion, and it cannot be added once you are in the resort.
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  Whether the wording names what you actually do: Go Protect names off-piste skiing and snowboarding. Nothing among the four names ski touring on its own, so ask for it before you book.
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  Your age against the plan’s limit: WorldSecure Platinum stops at 64, Safe Extreme at 49, Go Protect still prices a skier of 80.
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  Ski-equipment cover, separately from baggage: Only Go Protect sells it, at €3,000 per insured, and only it answers for gear broken on the mountain rather than lost in transit.

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  A cheap policy bought without the option: Eleven plans quote for the same trip without winter sports and none of them follows you onto a piste.
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  Assuming the card covers the mountain: The European Commission states that search and rescue costs are not covered by the European Health Insurance Card.
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  Leaving cancellation cover until January: Go Protect wants it inside 48 hours of booking, and a late policy carries a five-day waiting period.
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  Entering a timed race on the last day: Competition is excluded on Go Protect when the sport is practised professionally, and no wording among the four invites club racing.
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  Expecting a lift-pass refund: None of the four plans refunds an unused pass. Stay interruption pays unused land arrangements pro rata instead, and two of the four carry none.

Yes, but the choice narrows to two plans. We priced the same Alpine week at every age from 60 to 80 with winter sports on: three plans quote at 64, only Go Protect and SafeTrip Tourism quote from 65, and Go Protect still prices a skier of 80 at €75.03.

The cliff is sharp rather than gradual. WorldSecure Platinum holds its €31.08 premium flat all the way to 64 and then stops selling, because its wording caps the cover at 65. Safe Extreme, despite being the dearest of the four, is the first to go: it stops at 49, which makes it a plan for young off-piste skiers rather than for experienced ones. Go Protect holds €50.85 flat to 75 and steps once, to €75.03 at 80, keeping both the €25,000 rescue ceiling and the named off-piste cover the whole way.

So an Irish skier of 68 heading to Italy pays €50.85 with Go Protect or €113.00 with SafeTrip Tourism, and the trade is rescue against medical ceiling: €25,000 of rescue and €300,000 of care, or €4,000 of rescue and €500,000 of care with no hospital excess. For a skier, the rescue side is the one more likely to be claimed. Readers in this bracket usually want our wider senior travel insurance comparison too, and families skiing with grandparents in tow should read the family travel insurance page, since the four plans price children very differently.

• Is ski travel insurance compulsory in France, Austria or Italy?

  No, it is not compulsory in any of the three. It is rescue and hospital charges that make it necessary: French communes bill mountain rescue from €69 to €869 by zone, Austrian statutory cover reimburses no rescue costs for sport accidents, and your European Health Insurance Card pays none of it.

• Does a normal travel policy cover skiing?

  Not reliably. Eleven plans quote for an Irish resident going to the Alps without the winter-sports option, and the option is what removes the sliding-sports exclusion. Only four plans quote once you ask for it: WorldSecure Platinum, Go Protect, SafeTrip Tourism and Safe Extreme.

• How much does a week of ski cover cost from Ireland?

  €31.08 on WorldSecure Platinum and €50.85 on Go Protect for one skier aged 28 in the French Alps, with the winter-sports option on. Two skiers in Austria pay €62.15 or €101.70, and a family of four €124.30 or €183.06. Captured 28 October 2026.

• How much extra does the winter-sports option itself add?

  €1.42 on WorldSecure Platinum, which goes from €29.66 to €31.08 for the same week. On Go Protect it adds €21.24, from €29.61 to €50.85, and that is what buys the €25,000 mountain rescue ceiling and the off-piste cover named in the wording.

• Does the European Health Insurance Card cover mountain rescue?

  No. The European Commission states that your EHIC will not help you with rescue and repatriation, and that search and rescue costs are not covered by the card. It also does not cover private healthcare, which rules out many Alpine resort clinics.

• Is off-piste skiing covered?

  Only with the winter-sports option, and only Go Protect names off-piste skiing and snowboarding in its wording. An off-piste rescue is charged at €740 in Les Arcs and €869 in Megève before any helicopter, which is where a €4,000 or €5,000 ceiling starts to look thin.

• Is ski touring or randonnée covered?

  None of the four wordings we read names ski touring on its own, so do not assume the winter-sports option carries it. Ask for the activity to be named on your certificate before you book, and tick the extreme-sports box in the comparison form so the quotes you see carry the extension.

• Are my skis and snowboard insured?

  As baggage, between €1,500 and €2,000 depending on the plan, with an excess of €15 to €30. Only Go Protect sells dedicated ski-equipment cover, €3,000 per insured with a €50 excess, and it is the only one written for gear damaged on the mountain rather than lost in transit.

• Will my lift pass be refunded if I am injured or the lifts close?

  Not as a benefit of its own: none of the four plans refunds an unused ski pass. A holiday cut short is picked up by stay interruption instead, which pays unused land arrangements pro rata, €2,500 per person on Go Protect and €6,000 on SafeTrip Tourism. The other two carry none.

• Can I get ski cover over 65 in Ireland?

  Yes, from Go Protect and SafeTrip Tourism. WorldSecure Platinum stops selling at 65 and Safe Extreme at 49. Go Protect still quotes a skier of 80, at €75.03 for an Alpine week, keeping its €25,000 rescue ceiling.

• Can I add ski cover to multi trip travel insurance?

  No. None of our multi-trip plans accepts the winter-sports option, so the cover for a ski week is always a single-trip policy. Our multi-trip plans quote at €276.85 and €318.66 a year for a traveller of 35, and single-trip ski cover from €31.08, so most Irish skiers hold both.

• When should I buy ski cover?

  When you book the holiday. Go Protect only sells cancellation cover within 48 hours of booking, or up to 20 days before departure, and a policy bought inside 30 days of leaving carries a five-day waiting period. The winter-sports option also has to be on the policy before you travel.