Singles Cruises
Cruising is great if you're single but are solo travellers getting a rough deal from cruise companies?
For peter McNally, a 48-year-old single executive from Sydney, it's the people that make the cruise. There's the eccentric gentleman who persists on wearing a sports jacket over his swimming trunks at the pool; the youthful wine steward from France who McNally's fellow diners teasingly suggest might be taking a romantic interest in him; and, of course, the other single passengers.
"Cruising really is an ideal holiday for a single person," Mr McNally says. "On a cruise, you're a bunch of like-minded people doing the same thing at the same time so you'll invariably find people that you'll connect with."
International Cruise Council of Australasia General Manager Karen Christensen agrees that cruising is great for singles - because apart from the convivial atmosphere, she says, cruise ships offer single passengers safety and peace of mind while travelling to far-flung destinations.
But sailing solo can be costly.
"The majority of cruise lines will have a single supplement or some [marked up] fare that they can offer a single traveller," Ms Christensen says. "It's a standard policy throughout the majority of cruise lines."
A veteran cruise buff of 32 years, McNally last February sailed the Caribbean and Brazil's Atlantic coast for three weeks on the fted Queen Mary 2. And for the privilege, McNally paid 80 per cent on top of the standard twin-share rate for his QM2 balcony cabin. He admits to raising an eyebrow at the extra cost but he was attracted by the Brazilian itinerary and the newly launched ship, so he decided to splurge.
Generally cruising by himself at least once a year, McNally favours Queen Elizabeth 2 for its intimacy and single-berth cabins. Older vessels like QE2 accommodate single occupancies conducive to their irregular hull configurations and offer single-berth cabins at comparable rates to twin-share prices. But modern ships are generally more modular in design and cabins tend to be exclusively fitted for at least two people.
Slugging single travellers with higher rates is common practice right across the travel industry: hotels, coach tour operators and overnight trains all charge single supplements. But the levy usually ranges between 15 and 25 per cent of the standard twin-share cost. Rarely is it as high as 80 percent, a rate considered relatively acceptable for cruise packages that can range anywhere from 10 to more than 100 percent above the alternate twin-share price.
Debbie Collins and Ian McMinn, specialist cruise consultants with Sydney's Blue Full Service travel agency, say exorbitant supplement costs deter single travellers from cruising. "We point them in that direction but nine times out of 10 it's just too expensive," Mr McMinn says. "They can't justify the price in their minds."
Ms Collins says some solo travellers like Mr McNally are willing to absorb hefty supplements if they are drawn to particular vessels or itineraries. "But they're few and far between," she says. "Cruise companies really need to consider what they charge for singles. They would certainly get another market there that they haven't even touched base with at the moment. We could nearly double our cruise sales."
Cruise lines rationalise their pricing policies for singles like cinema chains explain the popcorn principle. The profits they make on selling tickets to the main feature are modest; the real money is to be made at the candy bar.
"We've taken singles groups before where every passenger is a single," Cruiseco National Marketing Manager Jo Quirke says. "But the problem is the cruise line is then missing out on the onboard spend - with twin share there are two people drinking at the bar and paying for onboard add ons."
Mr McNally says this is a misconception: "Would you rather have two passengers who eat everything that is free, never go to the bar and don't spend a penny on board - or someone who's a little more relaxed, wants to enjoy themselves and is going to spend up?"
Mr McNally believes his tendency to mingle sees him walking away from a cruise with a larger onboard bill than many of his twin-share acquaintances. "Single travellers are the sorts of people that are more likely to be spending money at the casino, to be spending money at the bars, to be buying the shore excursions and so on - they're looking for things to do," he says.
P&O Cruises, the only major cruise line operating year-round from Australian ports, encourages singles to share berths. P&O's mark-up for single passengers who take a private cabin is generally 60 per cent of the standard twin-share price. Singles who share double occupancies pay the same as couples sharing beds while three and four-berth cabins come with a 20 per cent discount per person below the twin-share cost.
If a single passenger doesn't have a friend or three with whom to share, P&O will match them with strangers. But the share-with-stranger option - difficult to come by on North American and European cruise products for liability concerns - does marginalise older passengers as well as those daunted by the prospect of sharing a cabin with someone they've never met.
But P&O says its price structure is not prohibitive for singles. "If the cruise looks more open, by arrangement, the passenger may end up having the cabin on their own at a lesser rate," says a spokesman from P&O, who encourages single passengers to bargain with the cruise line. "If there's space and scope to help people pay less and have their own cabin, that does happen."
Consensus among consumers and agents who are well educated on the product range of cruise-saturated markets, like the United States, is that knowledge of the system, persistence in shopping around and a little luck will help them bag a cheap single-berth cabin, often at no extra cost than if they were to share. But getting around the single-passenger surcharge is more difficult from within the relatively isolated Australian marketplace where consumers encounter difficulty taking advantage of specials and last-minute fares.
Mr Quirke says rather than slashing unfilled cabin prices close to departure, many cruise companies will hike up the surcharges on late-booking singles. "If you're dead-set on a particular destination on a particular ship at a particular date, you're better to book early. The later you leave it, the higher the single occupancy will get because it's yield managed," he says. "But if you want to go on a cruise and you're not tied to any particular date, destination or ship then it is worth shopping around and looking for that share-with-stranger option."
Cruise-savvy agents will maintain wait lists and attempt to match single clients based on particulars such as age and like interests that many cruise companies won't consider. Others sell their own cruise packages tailored specifically to singles, absorbing the supplement in the overall price or matching singles in shared cabins.
Cruiseco administers an online message board open for member agents to post client details looking for a potential twin-share partner. But, compared to the US where some websites and agents function more like dating services, resources in Australia for single travellers looking to connect prior to departure are relatively scarce.
Mr McNally says it pays for people persons like him to do their homework before booking a cruise. Singles not matched to the right product can end up more alone than when they started. "Try to get an idea of what sort of people will be on the ship because if they're not the sort of people you want to be with, you're not going to have a good time," McNally advises.
Fast Facts
The love boat
Princess was the first line to promote cruises as ideal for single travellers. They did it via the hit TV series, The Love Boat, which used shots of Princess ships and ran from 1977 to 1986. With the help of Captain Stubing, Julie, Gopher and a little high-seas magic, solo travellers (of all ages) rarely stayed that way for long.
Written by Ben Smailes - 17 Spring 2004