Travelling alone can be a scary prospect, especially for the first time traveller. This is what makes touring with companies like Trafalgar, Globus and others so attractive. It enables the solo traveller to safely experience the joy of travelling in the company of like-minded people.

But that opportunity often comes with a price – the Single Supplement.

What is the Single Supplement?

The single supplement is the extra cost applied to the price of a solo traveller’s tour primarily due to the hotels’ policy of pricing their rooms based on double occupancy.

What this means is that when two people occupy a hotel room, the cost is split between them. For example, if a hotel room is $200 a night, the room costs them $100 each.

But the solo traveller has to pay the full $200 for the same room. That extra $100 is factored into the single supplement.

So, if a ten night tour has the same cost per night, the single supplement would be $1000.

From time to time, a solo traveller will get a room with a single bed, but this doesn’t necessarily mean the cost of the room is half that of a regular room. If a regular room is $200, the single room might be $150. The solo traveller does save a few dollars, just not the full $100. The single supplement charge for that night would be $50 instead of $100.

I know some people have complained that the single room can be a “closet,” especially in older European hotels.

I’ve had more than three hundred rooms in the last ten years, and the one above, at the Rander’s Hotel in Randers, Denmark, was the only “closet” that I had. This would be considered a single room and would have been cheaper than a regular one.

The vast majority of rooms that I’ve had as a solo were like the two below. Some had one bed of varying sizes.

And others had two beds.

How Much is the Single Supplement?

The single supplement charge can vary depending on the type of travel. For cruises, it can often be 100% of the price for a regular cabin or slightly discounted for the growing number of single cabins.

For land tours, it can vary depending on the destination, the quality of the hotels, the length of the tour and availability of single rooms. On the average two week tour, I’ve paid anywhere from $300 to $1500.

The cost doesn’t vary much with small group tours since it’s the hotel quality that is the deciding factor, not the size of the group.

 

Can a Solo Traveller Avoid the Single Supplement?

There are ways to avoid the single supplement. Tour companies will sometimes offer a discount on the supplement or no supplement at all, usually on less popular departure dates like the shoulder season. In some cases, the number of discounted slots are very limited and you have to book the tours well in advance.

The most popular way to avoid the single supplement is to share the room.

There are positives and negatives to this.

 

The Advantages of a Roomshare.

The biggest advantage to a roomshare is that you don’t have to pay the single supplement. The company will assign you a roommate (same gender) and the cost would be the same as it is for a couple.

Another advantage is that if you sign up for the roomshare, but no one else is available to be assigned to you, you get the room to yourself without paying the single supplement.

The same could also happen if an odd number of solos sign up for a roomshare. You might be lucky enough to be the odd one out. On one tour, we had three women who had signed up for the roomshare and they actually took turns rooming together so that they all got a chance to have a room to themselves every third night.

 

The Disadvantages of a Roomshare

The disadvantages of the roomshare option can potentially ruin your trip. When you opt for the roomshare it means that you are sharing a hotel room with a complete stranger. In most instances, you don’t meet your roommate until the day you arrive on tour. That means you don’t know their personality, their quirks or their habits and this can result in a tension-filled tour.

I’ve done more than thirty tours over the last ten years, and while I’ve never done a roomshare, I’ve witnessed issues with those who were sharing and have spoken to others who relayed their own experiences.

Some of the issues include:

• A roommate who would go to bed late or wake early and make no attempt to be quiet. They would purposely slam doors, turn on the TV or play music.
• A roommate who snored loudly or used a loud breathing device.
• A roommate who absolutely refused to allow the air conditioning on in a very hot climate.
• A roommate who took possession of the entire room, leaving nowhere for their roommate to put their luggage or toiletries.
• A roommate who couldn’t sleep in complete darkness or silence and wanted the room light or TV left on all night.
• A roommate who would go out for the night, get drunk and return late. They would wake the other person when they returned, and in one case, even threw up on their roommate’s belongings.
• A roommate who returns in the early hours of the morning with another person intending on having intimate relations in the bed next to you. (The man left immediately upon learning there was another woman in the room).
• A roommate who used their roommate’s toiletries or electronics without permission.
• A roommate who stole their roommate’s possessions.
• A roommate who would get phone calls from home after midnight, sit up in bed and talk rather than leaving the room or going into the bathroom.
• A roommate who monopolized the bathroom, spending the entire night in there fixing their hair.
• A roommate who smoked in the room or wore a lot of perfume.
• A roommate who left soiled laundry all over the room, on both beds or filled the sink/tub with the laundry and left it there all night.
• A roommate who wasn’t hygienic. This included never flushing the toilet because they didn’t want to touch the handle.
• Having an elderly roommate with signs of dementia. In one case, the older woman “adopted” her younger roommate to be her nursemaid throughout the tour. It got to the point that it interfered with the younger woman’s tour as the elderly roommate took advantage of her meek personality. She even had the young woman stay on the bus to keep her company while the rest of the group were visiting sites like the Pyramids or the Valley of the Kings. This meant the woman missed out on the sightseeing and the guide wasn’t able to stop it. The rest of the group got together to write to the tour company to ask that she be given her money back.

And perhaps the worst example was a roommate who, on the first couple of nights, purposely made life as miserable as possible for a friend of mine. On the third day, they both agreed to separate and get their own rooms, but when they approached the tour director, the roommate who was instigating the problems said she didn’t want to separate. This meant the instigator would get the room to herself and not pay extra because my friend refused to stay in the same room with her.

That left her completely responsible for the full cost of a room, but as it happened during the tour, there were two other factors that she didn’t consider. First, if any of the hotels on the tour didn’t have a room available, she would have no choice but to room with the disruptive woman. And secondly, the cost of a room booked at the last minute may be higher, and as it turned out, she ended up paying hundreds more than if she had just paid the single supplement.

When you think about it, you can spend thousands of dollars on these tours. You want to get the most for your money. You want to enjoy every moment. But if you are faced with going to a room at the end of the day with someone who makes you miserable, it can ruin the tour for you. On one of my tours the tension between roommates was so bad, it followed them onto the bus during the day and made it uncomfortable for everyone else in the group.

For myself, I prefer to pay for the single supplement, because at the end of a long day of touring, there is nothing better than unwinding in your own room and having your own routine without interference.

Now, this isn’t to say that the roomshare is always bad. It simply is a substantial risk that cannot be ignored. If you have no choice but to share, you can try to minimize the risk. Some companies will give you your roommate’s e-mail address so that you can correspond ahead of time. This can give you time to decide if you want to room with them or not.

If you meet your roommate on the first day, you can immediately sit down and have a chat. You could talk about your routines, agree to boundaries, compromising on when to wake and when to go to bed. Agree to a section of the sink that you will both use and when you’d like to take your shower. It only takes a little effort on behalf of both roommates to make it work, and when it does, you can make a friend for life.

One last note – there are tour companies that advertise “no single supplement.” Take a closer look at the small print. What some companies do is automatically assign you a roommate. Always double check the specifics of any tour offering “no single supplement” to find out exactly what it means.

What are you thoughts?

Do you like a room to yourself? Have you had a good roomshare experience or a nightmare?

Tell me about it.

 

🙂