May 11, 2008 
As a veteran world traveler, Angela Pittman, 53, has come to accept that when it comes to certain kinds of travel, not all vacationers are created equal.
The single supplement - a charge levied by most tour operators on travelers occupying a single hotel room - is an ages-old fact of package tours that some rail against, others scoff at and some, such as Pittman, tacitly accept.
”People complain about it, but that’s just life,” says the retired arts educator from Winston-Salem, N.C.
But a surge in people traveling without partners has companies making accommodations for them in a number of ways. Some try to pair solo clients with a same-sex roommate and waive the single supplement if they’re unable to do so. A handful of operators have reduced or, in certain cases, suspended the single supplement, at least on some trips. And increasingly, mainstream operators are targeting the segment with singles-only itineraries.
The move is designed to tap into a growing lucrative market, particularly as baby boomers enter their retirement years. A survey of 30,000 respondents by AARP last fall projected that 25 million singles age 42 and older will spend $28 billion on travel this year. This group is more likely to take weekend trips and spends proportionately more per person than other travelers, the survey revealed.
That may be, but Diane Redfern, a British Columbia
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writer who tracks the solo travel market in her
newsletter, ”Connecting: Solo Travel News,” and on the Web site says she’s seen little in the way of price breaks for singles, particularly in North America.”The cruise lines and hotels are designing accommodations for two or even four people, and they’re still asking for a single supplement,” she says. ”What has changed is the number of organizations that are trying to attract single travelers.”
But even some of those entities are simply engaging in what Redfern calls ”creative marketing” and aren’t truly catering to solo travelers. ”What singles really want is a single-occupancy room at a single-occupancy price. They don’t want to pay more than two people sharing a room.”
Adventure travel tour operators have been particularly proactive in catering to single travelers, she adds, probably because their customer base tends to draw from that demographic. At Gutsy Women Travel (www.gutsywomen
travel.com) for instance, April Merenda, the president, has seen an ”inordinate number of single requests this year,” with up to 70 percent of clients booking as singles, she says.”It’s not like these women don’t have anyone to travel with. It’s a preference,” Merenda says.
Gutsy Women Travel’s single-supplement charges range from a low of $20 a day on trips to Argentina and Chile to about $100 a day for itineraries in Thailand.
Among others offering incentives to unpaired travelers:
Tauck World Discovery (tauck.com) annually waives or discounts the single supplement on some trips. This year, 54 departures (some already sold out) are discounted, with savings of up to 33 percent.
Intrepid Travel (intrepidtravel.com), a small-group adventure tour company based in Australia, this year launched trips geared to single travelers that carry no single supplement.
General Tours (generaltours.com) has waived the single-occupancy surcharge on 43 European river cruise departures in 2008.
Country Walkers (countrywalkers.com), with walking tours in 32 countries, says it doesn’t mark up the cost of single-occupancy rooms and guarantees to match singles with roommates if they’ve booked at least 61 days in advance for its Women’s Adventures trips, and 91 days ahead for regular tours.
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