Come on Dazza, turn ’round and show us yer pecs

I recently stayed at a vacation home in Long Beach Island, New Jersey. My family and I paid a very small sum of money to stay in a well-maintained three-bedroom condo for six days. This was a good halfway point for us to meet since they are in Massachusetts and we are in Maryland. We went parasailing (which is really fun if you have not tried it) and we rented jet skis. The rest of the time we worked on our tan and drank pina coladas!
We went through a nice website called rentjillshouse.com, where we were able to find a good rental firm to book our really fun vacation getaway. I would highly recommend using rentjillshouse.com for vacation home rentals. The site seemed well designed and was easy to use. Hope this blog was helpful.

I totally agree with you and it’s one of my pet peeves at the moment. I also travel a lot as a single person and have abandoned tour operators and package holidays for that very reason. The only suggestion I can make for why they charge such huge single supplements is that perhaps they reserve a ‘batch’ of twin/double rooms in hotels and therefore have to charge the double rate, regardless of how many people occupy it. You can nearly always book rooms cheaper direct with hotels and they are usually advertised as single rooms. However, you often find that when you get there, they’ve accommodated you in a twin/double room but at the single price. Maybe the travel agents don’t have to flexibility to do that.

However, that is definitely not the case with flights as one person can only ever occupy one seat… and I’ve tried booking a fly/drive, without accommodation, which was advertised at a very good price, only to find it increased substantially for just one person and I can’t offer any suggestions as to how they can justify that.

So perhaps single supplements are purely a way of making money by exploiting solo travellers who either don’t have the time, confidence or the facility to organise all the components of trips themselves. I’m sure older people who don’t have access to the Internet are victims of it all the time. However, as more and more people are doing things alone these days, I can’t imagine this makes up for the business they must be losing from people like us who are going elsewhere to get better value for our money.

A good example is lastminute.com who advertise a great range of holidays which, at first glance, are very attractively priced. However, as soon as you change the box from two travellers to one, either the price virtually doubles or you are told that the holiday is not available for single travellers. If you dig around on the site, they do have a section purely for single travellers but the range of holidays on offer is small and they never seem particularly competitively priced.

In the past few years I’ve travelled extensively in Europe and almost without exception, have found it much cheaper to book flights and accommodation direct with the airlines and hotels. Doing it this way, of course, does mean that you have to find your own way from airport to destination but in most places it’s quite easy and with the vast amount of information available on the Internet, it’s usually possible to have your route and method of transport worked out before you get there.

I said “almost without exception” and the one exception has been Expedia.com who have once or twice managed to beat the price I can find for myself. They deserve credit for being just about the only company that doesn’t penalise (exploit) single travellers and it’s always worth checking what they can offer. From my experience, booking is an easy process and they have been very reliable.

End of rant… now perhaps someone from the package holiday industry can shed some better informed light on the subject.

That baffles me too…one less person in the room and I have to pay MORE? Bizarre.

Solos is a Direct Sell Operator ( Shame), there are also some Companies such as Explore, Exodus, Peregrine etc for adventure travel that attract a lot of like minded single travellers, I believe there are a few new set ups that will Match people up ( No their not dating agencies Darren!!!!!) and avoid the Single Supplement, or using a good Independent Travel Agent, will try and find you the best deal. By the way Darren, on your Kos booking the Studio is 1/3 people and No Single Supplement for a Single althought the Studio is large enough to take Three.
Good deal or what.

Darren, I agree with you regarding single supplements. As a working, web-based travel agent I have disappointed so many potential customers over the years because the prices they have seen bore no resemblence to the final price that a single traveller would pay.

In fact I wrote on a number of occasions about some of the possible solutions that exist on our blog very recently. There are a number of “travel companions” websites that have sprung up to help single travellers team up with potential travel companions. Here’s one of the links, if this helps:

http://travelonline.typepad.com/travel_online/2006/09/match_and_go_ne.html

Now I know this is not the perfect answer as some people would not fancy this idae at all but I think it shows how big a problem this is if such sites are now in existence.

I have been a travel agent for over 30 years and I have to say its’ always been the same. At least the web allows some kind of solution with these types of websites.

It will be intersting i anyone can come up with any sort of long term solutions.

While the single room supplement may be annoying, what I find even worse is that nearly all holiday offers I try for are based on 2 people sharing, and rarely is there a price for a single. When booking online if I put in for 2 people, up comes the reservation, but if I enter 1 person….Sorry not available.

i have some experience of ski trips where i have shared with friends some of which ski some which don’t with varying levels of activity.
wanting to meet more likeminded ’ski all day types’ i went skiing with solos holidays only to find out that although they advertise 30-55 age range most are retired or rounding on that age and their activity levels are rather low - forget about apres ski dancing in town it ain’t gunna happen. to add insult to injury they stick £300 premium on the cost of the holiday and boast about how they don;t charge you a single supplement - how very generous!
then i tried speed breaks - much more reasonable prices and to save even more to can sort out your own ryanair etc flights - this company is easily the best value of any of the single operators but once again there is no organised apreas ski activities - it would appear to be common sense to ensure that all the travellers have a good social time, unfortunately it was left to a matriarch and a few predatory chaps.
a company will no doubt come along that organises the same common sense apreas ski activities as every other normal package ski holiday company - until that day i wait with baited breath and keep an e-mail list of good skiers with a sense of humor and apreas ski mentality for the odd trip i organise. unfortunatly i like to go three times but the mainstream do not like splitting double rooms so i either book direct with the hotels or potter along with the pot luck of whoever comes along on the single traveller trips

Couldn’t agree more about the scadal that is single person supplement. A tv prog recently covered this issue and a travel agent attempted to justify it by saying that hotels still have to service a room as if two people were in it. 1) I’ve just booked into a hotel in Italy in a SINGLE room yet am paying £115 more than the advertised price so how is that justified 2) If I were in a double room, I would use on set of bedding, one set of towels etc so where is the additional burden?

It angers me! Discrimination against single people, the industry is clearly run by smug marrieds!

I am a healthy elderly lady, new with the internet and I am fed up having to pay single supplement every time I wish to travel. Is there any travel agency, airline, hotel who encourages single, older person travel without having to share with a complete stranger. It doesn’t always work to have to do this.

I wonder why travel agents don’t worry about single travellers like me. I have the money to travel but not to pay a single supplement all the time. I would like to travel to France and Italy also within Australia -all State, especially Tasmania, WA and Northern Territory.

I also adore rail travel.

I too am a single traveller - in my early 50’s - for the reason that none of my friends want to ’see the world’ - just the inside of a bar. I am also fed up of the single supplement saga - but if you look hard enough and are prepared to go on certain dates you can get holidays without the single supplement rip off. Most of these holidays are usually out of season - eg april may and october but if you choose carefully you can still get good weather. It takes a lilttle more research and time but its all worth it for me because when I book - I’ve won.

Booking direct with Hotels and airlines is also good as you get more favourable rates because there is no middle man to feed!!

Hostels are also good - many these days have single rooms with en suite facilities and even if you have to share washing facilities - I have never had to use unclean ones.

Travelling in my eyes is all about what you want out of it - I am not a 4* person but I do have principles and your room is afterall only somewhere to put your head at night and as long as it has clean sheets and I’m not sharing with cockroaches - that’ll do me.

I have just booked 2 weeks touring around croatian adriatic isles - single room with balcony , full board, flight inclusive for under £ 700. The down side - I have to travel from Gatwick - hey! book well enough in advance with Virgin Trains and you’ll get return journey for £40 - less than National Express - the positive side - its in October - still good weather and it won’t be packed with tourists.

Good luck to all you single travellers - put in the effort and do the reasearch and you can go anywhere you want.

Rose

Having travelled a few times on my own,to a sunny location, this is the first time I have tried to book a skiing holiday. It annoys me when I spend ages on the internet getting excited that I have found a good deal only to click on to the next page and find out that it is twice as much.One company I called the other day added on 50% for having only one person in a room. I think it is a complete rip off and penalises the single person. It also makes me feel like some kind of reject, because you want to travel on your own!

I do hope that someone catches on the the single traveller market in the future and has a successful business,charging people a fair price.

I agree absolutely. I travel alone 90% of the time. One thing that angers me is that they make me pay the single supplement at “all inclusives”… BUT I am only eating for one, drinking for one, I am only one person on the shuttle, one person using the pool, one person using the water sports equip., one person using the towels….etc, etc, etc….

I usually book my flight and hotel separately to avoid the single supplement, but it angers me that the world is set up for couples!

Well Hi all fellow single suffering travellers. I agree, finding a singles holiday at any time of the year especially for the more mature (let’s just say over 55) is nigh on impossible without having to pat the dreaded supplement.

As a past regular traveller to the US I have been rather lucky in having friends there and have had company on my travels, however one cannot live by friends alone and am now looking to visit other parts of this wondrful world of ours.

In my younger days I enjoyed many excellent holidays in the Med, mainly Greek Islands, with the Villa Party type of vacation, good company, passable food and plenty of activities, watersports etc.

However for a now ‘over 45′ there doesn’t seem to be anything around especially if one is sociable and enjoys good company’.

So what I am suggesting is that maybe we can organisre groups of like minded single people to e-mail each other via this website and arrange to travel together. For those who have to travel alone but don’t really enjoy being alone on holiday it may be a good idea.

Will be interested to receive your comments…so don’t be shy

I would like to register the strongest objection to single supplements - they are a formof discrimination and should be outlawed.

Yes, the single supplement bugs me too. Also does the trying to book for your b-day celebration when it happens to fall around a major holiday. Not far to those that can’t help what month/date they were born. There are times that I’d rather not do the big holiday or b-day celebration with a whole group and just get away on own, but there’s always the extra charge of the “double occupancy” or holiday extra charges! Not fair. How come they - travel business don’t give some breaks to those that have to always deal with this each time they would like to celebrate their special occasion on their own?????

OK, I’ve found a great singles holiday flying from Manchester, other airports also available no extra charge. One week cruising the Turkish Med Coast on a Gulet full board and one week in a hotel half board £880 approx and NO supplement. The company is Solitair. Age range of the group apparently 35 - 70 yrs. They also do other destinations. I’m heading out 22nd Sept - 6th October