Flying solo? Prepare to pay up.
Janet Rahn, a software test analyst from Oakland, Calif., was shocked when she recently asked for a single rate on an Overseas Adventure Travel tour of Kenya and Tanzania. “As part of the package, they offered a layover in Amsterdam for about $125, based on double occupancy,” she remembers. “As a single, I’m being charged $270.”
The dreaded single supplement — charging solo guests up to twice a couple’s rate — isn’t new. If you travel by yourself, and stay in a room or cabin meant for two, you’d expect to pay a little more.
But lately, it seems, travel companies have come to see singles as suckers. For example, Rahn says that in addition to shelling out twice the room rate, Overseas Adventure Travel wanted her to pay a $20 penalty. Indeed, singles are often singled out for punitive fees and surcharges, ranging from extra taxes and port charges to “supplements” that far exceed what two people sharing a cabin or room would have to pay.
“It doesn’t make sense,” says Rahn. “If I were traveling with someone else, we would be charged a total of $250 for the room. Traveling by myself, I’m charged $270?”
She’s right, of course. It doesn’t make any sense.
Or does it? I asked Overseas Adventure Travel about the price discrepancy. It turns out the single rate of $270 is correct. But a review of Rahn’s reservation records suggests she may have been quoted the wrong price when she phoned the company. “My sales colleague might have given her the estimate of about $120 because she considered Ms. Rahn to be part of a double,” spokeswoman Priscilla O’Reilly told me. To its credit, the company agreed to honor its first price quote.
It might be a mistake to write off Rahn’s experience as a simple misunderstanding. Vicki Fuller, a retired teacher from New York, says she’s been paying single supplements for years, and has noticed a pattern. “They’re often 150 to 200 percent over the regular price for double occupancy,” she says.
“It feels like discrimination,” says reader Melanie Austin, summing up the sentiments of many solo travelers I’ve heard from.
It often is discrimination. Here four ways the travel industry is biased against singles – and what you can do about it.
1. Your money — or your vacation.
Travel companies sometimes treat their solo travelers worse than cargo. Shannon Kovack and her roommate prepaid for a tour of southern India last year. But just before their trip, her roommate broke her wrist and had to stay home. “I was contacted by the tour company and advised that now that I was a single traveler, I would have to pay an additional $2,990,” she says. “I pointed out that our trip was already paid for. Nope, they said — you have to pay the extra.”
Holding your vacation hostage in that way is wrong on so many levels, I don’t even know where to begin. But Kovack could have also bought travel insurance, which would have covered the extra money her tour operator was demanding at the 11th hour.
2. More fees, please.
One of the most common complaints I get from cruise passengers is that their single supplement more than doubled the cost of their cruise. When asked, their cruise line says the extra covers taxes and port fees. Some travel agents have suggested that this is nothing more than a money grab by cruise lines, and that those port fees aren’t going to the port, but straight to the cruise line’s bottom line. I think they’re probably right.
Reader Joanne Hoefer managed to sail around the fee problem when she took a cruise to Europe recently. “I found a really good travel agent, and she held my booking until the day after the final payments were due,” she told me. “That’s when the cruise lines start to cut fares.” She ended up paying less than half what she expected in single supplements.
3. Here’s the worst room in the house.
On a four-week tour of Greece, Maia Russell discovered that twice the price doesn’t always mean twice the room. As a solo traveler, she was handed the keys to closet-sized quarters. “The bed took up most of the room,” she remembers. “The washbasin was cracked, and water leaked onto the floor when you washed your hands. There was no fan, it was very hot and stuffy. The sheets didn’t look very fresh, and the counterpane was dirty. I couldn’t even open the windows.”
How to fix that? Russell asked politely to be moved to a larger, cleaner room. “Not possible,” she was told when she phoned the front desk. “We are fully booked.” Unable to sleep because of noise from the nearby elevator and the stifling heat, she finally threatened to come to the reception desk in her nightgown and “make a scene.” The hotel promptly moved her to a spacious room with a working air conditioner.
4. We don’t want your kind.
The travel industry makes life uncomfortable for solo travelers in countless other ways that, if they aren’t discriminatory, are at the very least awkward. Try eating in a restaurant by yourself if you need an example of that awkwardness. Reader Catherine Partridge is frustrated by seeing advertisements for travel products that end up costing her more because of a “hefty single supplement meant to punish solo travelers.” She adds, “The travel industry has absolutely no understanding that some people have to or even want to travel solo.” Her anger boiled over recently when American Airlines introduced a Web site for women traveling. “I thought this was great until I realized it was aimed at women traveling with their kids, or in groups,” she says.
Maybe the best way of approaching a travel industry that continues to treat singles as second-class citizens is to remind them that you are part of a large and growing group, at least according to a 2005 survey of travelers, which found that 4 in 10 people vacation on their own.
The travel industry often takes solo travelers for granted, asking them to pay more and giving them less. A competent travel agent and a phone call is sometimes all it takes to remind them that just because you’re single, doesn’t mean you’re a sucker.
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I am an avid solo traveler. I can never find friends or family to go to some far off place with me. Luckily, I found two tour companies that don’t charge a single supplement– I just have to share a room with a person of the same sex (you don’t speend a lot of time in your rooms anyway). It’s a great way to meet fun people from around the world who are out to have a good time and not fuss over hotel amenities. I highly recommend it!
The two companies are: Imaginative Traveller and Intrepid Travel.
Imaginative has a range of tour styles including “family” tours and a higher Connoisseur-style (which does charge a single supplement but not double the price!).
Can you tell I’m a fan??
If you get a single supplement which is more than twice the price of the double accommodations – make UP a fictitious traveler and pay for them as well. you save money – when the time comes to check in – say they’ll be along later.
All is well. Take 2 keys.
I LOVE Joe’s idea! Otherwise, there’s no way I’d travel with a company that charges me more for being solo.
As for Stacy’s comment, many more companies than the one she found offer to pair people up. Most active adventure companies do so, it seems, particularly those that offer trips specifically for solo travelers.
I’ve heard the range in cruise companies, from waiving the supplement on certain sailings to charging solo travelers 200 percent what is charged per person double occupancy. I’d say, be willing to shop around.
Then there are the resorts that actually cater to solo travelers, such as the BodyHoliday at LeSport on St. Lucia which built 29 rooms specifically for solo travelers. They cater to a British clientele, at least that’s who’s shown up so far, and it seems the Brits are less willing to share a room with a stranger.
When it comes to solo travel, something’s got to give, I hope. More solo travelers are spending money on trips than ever before. Shouldn’t the industry wise up if it wants to capture their cash?
A similar prejudice is against single parents traveling with children.
Take a resort and the kid pays full boat as the second adult even though they are not able to partake in all of the amenities.
We work with resorts that will work with us and are trying to eliminate the discrepancy!
I’m taking a GAP Adventure tour this December by myself, and I am happy to say that they do NOT charge a single supplement for MOST of their tours. Mind you, you do end up sharing with another single person, most often the same sex, so you do not have a room by yourself. But there is an odd number on the trip, you can end up with your own room.
Actually, looking above, this company is basically the same type as Intrepid, they both offer similar trips.
Well – I CAN understand the supplement – prices for tours are determined based on a certain amount of revenue from each room and are priced accordingly. However, I have NEVER seen a single supp of more than 50% of the price of the room/cabin – guess I have not looked in a decade or two.
Handle it this way- make a reservation for TWO using a fake name, Pay the deposits. On the LAST day you can get a free refund, call the company directly and state: “My companion is unable to go due to a job requirement. What can you do for me – if they say nothing – then cancel. Otherwise – NEGOTIATE – HARD.
In this economy where cruise and tour companies are seeing bookings evaporate right and left, many will be more than happy to work something out with you.
Otherwise – do a last minute tour – and call and negotiate.
I love traveling alone! This year I’ve been all over Mexico and down to Honduras solo. Recently, I was in Sayulita, Mexico alone and had TWO people ask me if I’d been left at the altar! I don’t think I looked that miserable… I guess they just didn’t understand a girl going to the beach alone. A few days later I had a hotel employee in Guadalajara inform me TWO times that I could not bring “a male friend back to the bed”. Thanks for the advice. I kind of accept the financial side of traveling alone, but I’m more sick of the perception that I’m either some kind of desperate fool who was left at the altar, or a desperate slut who needs constant reminder not to bring strange men back to my room. In Egypt I was harassed constantly by the staff at my resort (for example, they called my room at 1:00 am and tried to engage in phone sex, and they shoved breadsticks down their pants in the hotel restaurant, then asked me what I thought of the size). I know I would have been treated a lot better if I’d been with friends, family or a partner. I’m a teacher who works with kids all day and comes home to live with roommates. I just want a nice, quiet holiday to myself… please let me be!
The roommate matching service offered by travel groups may be good for some people but there are those of us that value our privacy. Letting a stranger into your room is always a bad idea. You may be lucky a number of times but eventually, something usually goes wrong. As a shared room occupant, you can be held liable for damages that you did not do and missing items from the room. Some hotels do count towels.
For those who live alone by choice and travel single by choice, the stranger in my room at night is not an acceptable option. 30+ years in law enforcement may have jaded my view but I consider an unknown roomate the same hazzard as flashing cash in a bar or letting children get into a car with a stranger.
Think about it from a security point of view. I don’t know you. Being able to afford a trip does not mean you are honest. It does not mean you have good judgement. If I don’t know you well enough to give you money or loan you my car, I certainly am not going to sleep with you there. When some one is sleeping, they are completely defensless.
If you snore and I can not go to sleep, will you refund my money? I don’t think so.