If there’s one thing the travel industry can be proud of this year it’s the punishment it’s meted out to the English language. First there was the widespread use of staycation, then the truly dreadful funemployment and now ebookers think it’s fine to coin the term solidays.
Solidays aren’t days when a little more fibre in the diet might have been a good idea, but are holidays for people travelling on their own, more specifically with ebookers people whose friends don’t have the same levels of disposable income to travel with them.
I have read a lot of complaints in the press recently about how solo travellers feel victimised by the travel industry, as though there is some sort of great conspiracy against them. Part of this stems from hotels and single occupancy rates. Hoteliers don’t have anything against solo travellers, it just comes down to a question of economics, although I think if occupancy is low hotels could be quicker to waive the supplement.
There are also issues with cruises with passengers complaining that ships don’t have enough single cabins. Unfortunately, it comes down to economics again and it is much more efficient to have 5 twin cabins than 6 single cabins.
But does the industry on the whole treat solo travellers unfairly? It’s true that very few tour operators will have meetings where somebody will say “let’s do something for people travelling on their own”. It just doesn’t happen, and how many successful tour operators are there that cater for solo travellers?
Part of the problem lies in that as a segment, solo travellers have nothing in common other than they travel on their own. People travel on their own for many different reasons and at many different ages and a result they are quite hard to market to.
But maybe the traditional perception of solo travellers as being independent and not necessarily keen on “solo” holidays has kept the industry from giving solo travellers what they want. Most of the comments I have read from solo travellers don’t want holidays specifically for them, they just want a fair deal. I’m sure that there is more scope within the industry for more focus on solo travellers and any operator who can limit their supplements will probably see a significant upside in doing so.
