Single supplements are why I started staying in youth hostels.

If the industry would just switch to a per room, not a per person rate, all of this discussion would be moot!

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I have no problem when it’s transparent.

If the rate is per room, which is common at hotels, then I expect to pay for the room regardless of how many people there are. It should be the same price whether I have one person in it or five of my friends over for a slumber party. Many hotels try to charge more for extra people, which I also think is unfair when they’ve advertised a room rate. If the charge less than the room rate for one person then I regard this as a discount. This is a nice touch, especially if the rate includes breakfast (I typically only eat one breakfast!). However, I don’t expect this because they’ve quoted a per room rate and as a single person I am still using the whole room.

On the other hand, some places, particularly B&Bs, charge a rate per person. This makes sense since the breakfast is a large part of the cost. I don’t have a problem if it’s genuinely a per person rate and it doesn’t change depending on how many people there are in the room. If they want to have a person rate they should stick to it. Too often this is not the case. Advertising a rate of £60 per person is false advertising if it costs a single person £90 for the room.

I’ve never encountered the single supplement anywhere except in accommodation, probably because I don’t tend to book packages.

I definitely agree with Robbin that youth hostels are a great solution for single travellers.

This post from Christopher Elliott is also interesting: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/11/TRB819JVSC.DTL

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They don’t do this in hotels the US…a hotel room costs the same if it’s just you, or if it’s a family of four.

I have to say though, I feel more hard done by having to pay extra for each person staying in a room since, as the article says, it doesn’t really cost the hotel any extra per person in the room, but they increase their profits if u eat at at the hotel, etc.

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@Robbin. I don’t quite understand the rate per room argument because all you get is the rate per room based on the cost of two people in the room. If you are solo you just end up paying the two person rate. At least with a single supplement,you do get a little bit of a discount.

So you would rather a hotel charged £100 per room, or £50 per person with a £25 single occupancy supplement?

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@ Darren
I am just puzzled that solo travellers seem to prefer this pricing. Paying per room you are always paying the same amount as a couple, whereas per person with a supplement you are paying less. Surely the latter is fairer for solo travellers?

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@ Darren
I’m not saying I agree with one or the other, just from a logical point of view, I can’t see that paying for a room, as opposed to per person, does solo travellers many favours.

As someone who has done contracting for tour operators, I think it’s very hard to get hotels to change their pricing structures. You can work on them for better rates, reduced supplements or special offers, etc. But to get them to change the way they price rooms? It might be different if you are contracting for Tui or Thomas Cook and have huge clout, but for a lot of operators they have to work with what hotels give them. It’s therefore maybe a little harsh to blame operators when it is more of an issue with the hospitality industry. As long as hotels use RevPAR as a key measure of their success, it is going to be hard for solo travellers. Whether it’s right or wrong is another matter.

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Darren,
IMHO it all boils down to marketing. If a company is selling packages it sounds better to promote the cheapest package. So, taking Simon’s example (one night at a hotel where the room costs £100 per night). Which would stimulate the most interest advertising the package as “from £50, £75 or £100″? Its a no brainer isn’t it?
Now you have to read the small print and find that to get the £50 package, there needs to be 2 in your party and if you are a couple and you are the only breadwinner it is actually going to cost you £100 for the package. The single person has only paid £75.
The industry does the same with villas and apartments £15/person/night sounds better than a total weekly package price of £630.

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Darren,
Its simple mathematics. If a room has to be sold for £100 per night to provide a fair profit for a hotel, then if 2 persons occupy the room they will only need to pay £50 each. Do you really believe you should be able to stay in that room for £50 per night?

You say: “The argument from the travel industry has always been that one person uses the same amount of electricity, bedding etc as two people. While that might be true, the real reason I think it’s because they are simply losing out on revenue because only one person has stayed.”
It might be true? If you stay in double bed you will use the same amount of bedding. You will use virtually the same to heat the room. Why should that hotel sell the room to a single person for less than £100? The only reduction that would be fair would be to assume that a single person would consume less hot and cold water. So perhaps no more than £5 savings to be passed on. How much do you consider would be a fair price for the room?

Robbie makes a good point about Youth Hostels, but if you want to have a room to yourself you will need to rent a double or four person room and pay 2 – 4 times the rate of a single person staying in a shared dormitory. She then goes on to say that fixed room rates would end this debate. No, it wouldn’t as the package holiday providers would continue to offer packages based on 2 persons sharing a room.

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What bugs me most is paying a single supplement on a cruise, which is usually 200%, occassionally “only” 150% – I certainly don’t eat for two, but I’m certainly paying it, among other things. Never stayed at an all-inclusive resort, but they do the same thing.

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It makes me laugh when people say that hotels should charge per room instead of charging a single supplement – it works out the same anyway.

The reason hotels do this, rather than putting in dedicated single rooms and charging lower rates, is because they are under increasingly intense pressure from their owners to maximise yield. Owners don’t care about sales & marketing, about PR, about customer relations – they just want each room to produce as much revenue as it can. I used to be a hotel DOSM and trying to discuss anything other than $$$ with the owner’s rep was like talking to a wall.

But equally, think about your business – would you sell your product for $50 when you could just as easily sell it for $100?

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Darren, seems to think its all about greed. Strange then that travel companies are not the most profitable. If travel is so lucrative, why do so many travel companies file for bankruptcy?

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[...] supplements. Darren Cronian of Travel Rants says the travel industry treats solo travellers unfairly. Judging from the recent example in Christopher Elliott’s column in the San Francisco [...]

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@Simon, you said: “So you would rather a hotel charged £100 per room, or £50 per person with a £25 single occupancy supplement?”

I would rather they charged £100 per room because it’s transparent and I know what I’m in for with no nasty surprises. If it’s too expensive I may look for other options, but it’s a straightforward, honest price and I would have no cause for complaint.

If the hotel quoted me £50 per person, then I would expect to pay £50 per person. IMO, to add a £25 single supplement on top of this is false advertising.

Many hotels and especially B&Bs do in fact have single rooms available. There should be more of this.

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I’m not accustomed to travelling alone so I hadn’t encountered single supplements until my solo trip through Scotland in June. I stayed in a variety of places – including dorm rooms in youth hostels (per person rate), B&Bs (per person rate with no single supplement), standard rooms in hotels (per room rate), and single rooms in hotels (per room rate but cheaper). This was all fine – the standard hotel room did work out expensive since there was only one of me but as there were no single rooms available and I needed a place to stay, I was happy to pay it.

Then on the Isle of Skye I nearly got caught out by this deceptive single supplement scam. I rang a hotel and they quoted me a rate per person. At first I thought this was genuine and I actually nearly travelled an hour by bus to a remote part of the island to reach the hotel. Luckily I asked a few questions first and realised that there was a £30 single supplement so I altered my plans and stayed in the hostel in Portree instead. I found this extremely misleading! I use the word scam on purpose – it’s purely a marketing tactic to make rooms seem cheaper than they really are. It’s a bit like airlines advertising the price before taxes and other charges.

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I agree with Caitlin, there is quite a bit of misleading advertising out there in the travel industry. I have often seen great prices listed for hotel rooms, cruises, all-inclusives, etc., but when you read the tiny, tiny fine print, you see that the price is based on “per person double occupancy”. Which means it’s going to cost me, as a solo traveler, twice as much as that “great deal” that’s being advertised. And now it’s not such a great deal any more. No thanks, I’ll pass. Solo travelers have to read the fine print very carefully, or we’ll get stuck with a nasty surprise on our bill.

One of the reasons I haven’t yet taken a cruise, even though I would like to, is because of the horrible single supplements that are attached to them. I could avoid it by agreeing to share a room with a stranger, but I don’t particularly want to share my room with a stranger. That’s not my idea of a good vacation. And I think it’s terrible that they would expect me to be okay with that! How would a traveling married couple feel, if, instead of bunking in a room with their spouse, they were forced to bunk with a stranger of the same sex because the hotel, cruise ship, or resort didn’t want members of the opposite sex in the same room, even if they were married? There would be an outcry. People wouldn’t put up with that. So why is it okay to do that to solos?

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@Gray Actually I disagree. I think it’s fabulous that you have the option of sharing a room with a stranger to save costs. No one tries to keep people of the opposite sex apart if they know each other – the policy is just that strangers need to be the same sex.

This is what happens in a dorm room in a youth hostel and what usually happens in a sleeper train. When I was researching options to take the ferry from England to Norway, I was shocked that the ferry company expected me to pay for an entire berth. I thought they should treat it like sleeper trains and offer the option of sharing with a stranger. You are not forced to share with a stranger if you are prepared to pay for the whole berth but you have an option to save money.

I thought it was a huge step backwards when First Great Western abolished the option to share with strangers on the London-Cornwall sleeper route: http://www.roamingtales.com/2008/05/29/cornwall-sleeper-train-separates-strangers/

I don’t expect that I’ll get a whole double room to myself for half price – that’s not fair to the travel companies. I DO expect that they should provide more single rooms and, where appropriate, offer sharing options. And I DO expect transparency in pricing, which the UK doesn’t seem to have.

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Yeah, I know that in reality, no one tries to keep members of the opposite sex apart if they know each other; I made that up as an extreme example to make a point. Obviously not a very good example. Sorry for the confusion.

I can see your point, Caitlin, that IF you’re the kind of person who doesn’t mind bunking with strangers, it affords you the opportunity to save money, and it’s nice that the option exists, so long as it’s not the only option for saving money. It is exactly like staying in a hostel or living in a dorm in college. But I’ve never done those things. I’m used to having my own space.

I’m an introvert; I NEED a quiet place to get away from people for a little while every day and have some alone time. Having to share my private room with a stranger would not be enjoyable for me. At all.

My point was that hotels, cruise ships, etc. could and should be creating more single rooms for solo travelers. There are certainly enough of us out there to make it worth their while, if they’d look at the numbers and do the math. I don’t care how small that single room is. If it’s private, and 1/2 the price of a two-person room, I’ll take it over bunking with a stranger any day of the week.

Am I being unrealistic to expect some privacy when I travel without having to pay a high price tag for it? Is this a particularly American notion that the rest of the world doesn’t share? I don’t know.

I haven’t traveled extensively around the world, but I’ve heard that some other countries are much better than North America about offering single rooms. True or false?

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@Gray I think the sharing rooms might not be as bad as you think it’s going to be, no matter how introverted you are! You should try it some time.

I don’t really know or care about cruise ships, which are pretty much the most environmentally and socially destructive form imaginable, but in general I definitely agree about the need for more single rooms.

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[...] Travel industry treats solo travellers unfairly [...]

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I think everyone would agree that it’s not unreasonable for a single person sleeping in a double or twin room to pay extra, my main gripe is you pay the extra even if you’re in a single room,usually tiny and much inferior to the rooms made for two. Can anyone explain this?

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Hi Darren, I think you bring up a good point. The only comment I have (in agreement with Simon) is that I’m not entirely sure your rant should be directed at tour operators. Instead, it should be directed at hotels. I can’t speak for every tour operator, but I know that when it comes to single supplements, our company simply passes along the extra cost that hotels impose on us. The hotels generally have a double occupancy rate (eg, $200 per room) and a single occupancy rate, which is lower than the double rate but higher than half of the double rate (thus, in this example it might be $150 for single occupancy). So as an individual traveling alone, you end up paying an extra $50 – hence the single supplement.

The good news, though, is that this last year has forced many players in the travel industry to re-think their business practices. Within our nice market we have seen a number of hotels and lodges do away with single supplements.

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Hi Darren,
I am a frequent solo traveller and single supplements are my biggest bugbear and the reason I don’t use tour operators. Like you, I book the components (flight & hotel) independently because it works out a lot cheaper to do so. The tour operators always cite the hotels as being responsible for the supplements they charge but in most cases, this is simply not true. In my experience, although hotels do tend to charge more for single occupancy than 50 per cent of double occupancy, this is nothing like the huge amounts levied by tour operators.
And to add insult to injury, when going through the booking process with an online tour operator, you state that you are a single traveller right up front and it’s only in the latter stages of booking that the supplements are added… thus making a trip which initially looked affordable, prohibitively expensive and wasting lots of time in the process.
The only company I’ve used on the odd occasion is Expedia which appears to charge the same prices as the hotels themselves. And of course, that means the trip is ATOL protected. But in general, I’m tired of being penalised for being a single traveller and can’t see a reason for it other than being used to bolster profits.
Good luck with your BBC appearance and I hope you can give this issue some badly needed publicity.

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As a solo traveller, I frequently spend huge amounts of time seeking out single traveller bargains. More often than not, I’ll book at the components of trips independantly – flights, hotels, cars etc – rather than through a package.
Single traveller supplemtns are a scam – nothing less. I came across a 12 day sailing trip around the Greek Island this year – price per person sharing £2395 each – price of a single was £4900 -a 104% uplift. And none of that included the flights to / from Athems or transfers to Pireaus to get to the boat.
Another email bulletin regarded packaged holidays I received indicated single supplement free weeks on selected dates. Looking down the list of weeks available, the normal weeks were £1700 per person plus a Singles Supp of £405 – total of £2105.
However, on the supplement free weeks – the price for evreyone – single or coupled up was — you guessed – £2105. So not only was the single supplement just wrapped up in the increased price – even the couples were being penalised to the time of an extra £405 each.

I’ve travelled extensively over the years – NZ , Oz, HongKong, China, Canada, Antarctica, Sth America, pretty much all of Europe, Canaries, the Med, Fiji, Maldives, Singapore etc etc , many of them for extended trips of 4 plus weeks and have many many more places I would like to go to, some of which are not necessarily advisable for lone travelling but the add-on supplements for solos is becoming prohibitive and impacts on general affordability.

I’ve never found the so-called ‘ Single traveller friendly ‘ operators any cheaper. In most cases they aren’t. The phrase is simply marketing hype.

The travel industry will one day wake up to the demographic changes of the world and the fact that more people are living alone for whatever reason & may not therefore wish to travel & share with others. There is a areasonable amount that I would pay for the supplement, but not at the expense of being basically ripped off by greedy grabbing operators or hoteliers out to make a fast buck.

They may think the solos can be treated as cash cows to milk for all we are worth. As many comanies in general industry are finding at present, it is better to have some business at perhaps a reduced margin than no business at all.
Low Margins & High turnover is far better High Margins & low turnover in my book.

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Sometimes in life you have to been willing to pay a little bit extra to get what you want, that’s just the way it is. But you find many hotels now a days just charge a room rate, if you book direct with them.

Once upon a time many years ago I stayed in a hostel for a 3 months in Israel and I wouldn’t do it again if it was for free. It was my version of being sent to hell.

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