Travel insurance for Tortola and the wider British Virgin Islands is no longer compulsory, but it is strongly worth arranging before your trip. The islands ended their mandatory travel-insurance entry requirement on 15 July 2022, so cover is now recommended rather than required. The reason to carry it is straightforward: the British Virgin Islands have limited medical facilities, serious cases have to be evacuated, and that is expensive to face without a policy behind you.
Medical care and evacuation
The main hospital is Dr D. Orlando Smith Hospital in Road Town, Tortola, formerly known as Peebles Hospital. It has an emergency room staffed around the clock and is supported by several clinics across the territory. It can handle routine and emergency care, but it does not have the specialist depth of a large hospital, so complex cases are stabilised and then evacuated to a neighbouring island or to the United States. As a guide, cover with at least US$50,000 for emergency medical treatment and US$100,000 for medical evacuation is a reasonable starting point, and higher evacuation limits are worth considering because serious cases leave the islands.
Diving and the decompression gap
The British Virgin Islands are a major sailing and diving destination, and there is one specific gap worth knowing about: there is no hyperbaric chamber in the territory. A diver who develops decompression illness is transferred to St Thomas in the US Virgin Islands for treatment. If you plan to dive, confirm your policy covers recreational scuba to your planned depth, and that it covers the cost of transfer and treatment in a decompression chamber, which standard leisure policies sometimes exclude.
Hurricane season and choosing a policy
The hurricane season runs from June to November and can bring dangerous conditions and severe trip disruption. Trip-interruption and travel-delay cover protect prepaid costs, but usually only if the policy is bought before a specific storm is named. Subscription-style cover such as SafetyWing suits long or open-ended trips, while a fixed per-trip policy is usually better value for a short visit. Buy the policy before you leave home, because most insurers will not cover a trip once it has already started.