12 Ways to Avoid Single Supplements

12 Ways to Avoid Solo Supplements

 Today we learn how to avoid the dreaded solo supplements that can add up to as much as 100% of the cost of your adventure!

Discover the 12 ways to waive or reduce the dreaded single supplement add on fees.

Here are some other helpful links:

Active Adventures

Solo Travel Tips

How to Save Money FOR Travel

How to Save Money ON Travel

The Podcasts:

https://activetraveladventures.com

https://adventuretravelshowpodcast.com

(C) Active Travel Adventures, LLC – All Rights Reserved

Complete Transcript

Note that this is machine generated and thus will have multiple boo boos, but I offer this to those who prefer to read rather than listen to the podcast. 

I hate paying single supplements and I bet you do too. In fact, I know Shara does. It was her suggestion that we do the show today on single supplements. What are the different ways that we can avoid paying those dreaded fees that companies tack onto us if we’re traveling solo, so we’re going to be covering that today on this the adventure travel show podcast. I’m your host kit parks and let’s get started. Before we do get started, I would like to do a special shout out to whoever chimpy one Oh one is who took the time to do a rating and review on Apple podcasts. He says, great podcast covers up the thorough subjects. It’s like taking classes in travel. Thanks kit and thank you chimpy one-on-one for taking the time, not only to rate but also to leave a comment so I don’t feel like it’s just me in a closet with a microphone. I really appreciate that

And if you haven’t taken the time to do a rating, I would appreciate a five star review and a comment like chubby did to let me know what you think of the show. It gives me feedback that I love and helps others to find the show. Thanks so much, but now let’s get started on talking about single supplements, that dreaded fee that can sometimes boost the cost of your trip by 100% to begin with. Let’s back up. What exactly is a single supplement? Okay. A lot of times that travel company will base their prices based on double occupancy or PPD. Oh, you’re sometimes you’ll see a little asterisk by the price that’s usually going to indicate that there’s a single supplement fee and they’re pricing whatever they’re advertising, whether it’s a tour or lodging as a PPD. Oh, per person, double occupancy. When a company charges you more for traveling solo, these add on fees are called single supplements or solo supplements. You’ll see these supplements ratcheting up the cost of your adventure by 10 to even a hundred percent for people that are traveling solo, so that’s why I refer to them as the dreaded Cylo supplement fee. I put together 12 ways that you can avoid paying single supplements or at least reducing them.

Okay, let’s go through them one by one.

Number one, find companies that do not charge solo supplement fees. Sounds simple, right? Yeah. Simple. It’s just really hard to find, especially the tour companies. It can be hard to find with a tour company a little bit easier with hotels, but look for the hotels and the tour companies that don’t charge a soulless up lump fee at all. So just start with a company that charges you the same with you’re traveling solo or as a couple.

Oh, all the hotels in the U S you pay the cost for the room, whether it’s one person or two person. Sometimes there’s an upcharge if there’s an extra person, but not more charges if you’re traveling by yourself. I find the opposite in Europe where prices tend to be double. If I’m traveling solo because they priced their rooms, assuming two people and I’m only the one shows up, that’s one person’s got to pay the rate of two people. So I guess the bottom line is on hotels, a lot of it is the tradition of the country itself, how they tend to advertise their rates. So hotels tend to have patterns by the country. But when it comes to tour companies, trying to find those few that do not charge a solo supplement fee. It all can be challenging, but there are some of them out there. Sometimes they are basing their whole price of the tour based on the fact that it’s going to be solo people.

So even though they say, Oh, no solo supplement fee, the trip is much more expensive than a comparable trip from another company that does charge the soul supplement phase. So you still need to comparison shop regardless of what you do because it’s still a little bit dicey and sell the supplements for at least right now as I’ll tell you a little bit later in the show, it’s getting better, but it’s still a bad scene for solo travelers. A number one is be in the lookout for those companies that do not charge the solo supplement fee, but do your homework to make sure that they’re not jacking up the price to trick you to thinking you’re not paying a fee when it’s actually built into the cost because they market strictly to solo people. The second way to avoid paying a single supplement is to use tour companies that offer a roommate matching service.

In this situation, the company matches you with the same sex roommate. Two examples are my affiliates, active adventures and adventure women. So if the company can’t find you a roommate, then you could a soul room without paying that dreaded solo supplement fee. This is what I did in New Zealand where I had Rachel from Singapore was my roommate and when I was on my active adventures trip on the South Island of New Zealand, they matched me with Rachel and then on the North Island, since there wasn’t another solo female, I got my own room, but I didn’t have to pay the dreaded fee. So I liked doing that. The same thing happened on my rafting trip with the venture women. They had an odd number of solo females and since we were camping each night, it made it really easy to switch roommates daily. So most nights I had a different roommate, which gave me a chance to get to know some of my fellow travelers a little bit better. And then every few nights I had got my own tent. I thought it worked out great. And of course, if you want your own room, you can always pay that dreaded fee to ensure that you have a single room.

So if you’re not having any luck finding a tour company going to your destination that either has no single supplement fee or doesn’t offer a roommate matching service, I’ve got several more ways for you to try to reduce or eliminate that fee. So let’s move on to tip number three. Book late. You wouldn’t look for last minute waivers on solo supplement fees. And what we consider last minute may not be the same thing as last minute to a tour company. Here’s where you can get lucky on trips like the Antarctic cruise or a bike boat tour, like the one I’m doing, Croatia, where the tour company has booked the accommodations. So they’ve got to pay for these accommodations, whether they’re filled or not filled. So all of a sudden when they get near their magic time, which is usually a couple months outside of the departure date, they get really anxious and they’re going to fill that room.

And one way they can do that is by eliminating that solo supplement fee. One person in a room is better than zero people in the room. You’ll also find deals like this with companies that have to buy a permit to do a specific adventure such as hiking Inca trail or another permit in some back country thing that only a limited number of permits are allowed each day or at each time, my rafting adventure of the middle fork of the salmon river as another example, I happened to buy the last ticket, but if that space is available as we’re getting closer, you got to believe that’s going to go on sale because they had to pay for that permit whether I was in the raft or not. So if you’re considering a destination or a tour that the company is going to have a sunk cost at, they’re stuck.

Whether or not they fill that seat or not, whether they fill that room or not, they’ve got to pay for it either with a permit or a booked room. Those are the ones that you’re likely to see a sale if they don’t sell out. Any of you got the time, you a longterm planner, look at what deals they’re offering now for a trip that you’re thinking about for next year. So you get an idea of which ones do put things on sale. There’s more than you think because most people do plan for an advance and the companies know how far out their average customer waits to book. So if most of their clients are booking five, six, seven months out and they’re three months out and they still got spaces, they’re getting twitchy and they’re about ready to put on a sale. And if you’re one of the ones that books that far out, you may never see that it did go on sale to the fellow people that you’re sitting next to on that very same trip.

So if you are a longterm planner, look this year at what sales are having for something you’re considering for next year. Just to get an idea. In order to find out about these deals though, you need to get on the tour companies, email lists and also follow them on social as a lot of times the deals are being advertised just in social media now, so booking late is a great way to find last minute deals and solo waivers, but a booking late doesn’t work for you because it makes you nervous yourself as you want to have that room and that’s what the companies are counting on. There’s another alternative and that’s the opposite book really early. Yup, that’s right. Book early. Just the opposite of what I just told you. Ironically number four book early can also save you some money on solo supplement fees. Let’s say a company is just starting a brand new tour that they’re, it’s still not, doesn’t have a lot of reviews that hasn’t gotten really off the ground yet and it could be their initial time out of the pike.

They want to make sure that that baby is full and so oftentimes when they first list the tour, they may waive the fee because they want to make sure they have at least a certain nut covered on their trip. So if you book really early, you might also be able to get a waiver of that solo supplement fee. You see this pattern in the airlines. The pattern I often see with airfares is when a new route is first announced of course there they wouldn’t be really competitive and get people to fly them on this new route and to the price. I’ll be cheap, but then when it gets out further than the average person is going to book a ticket, the price is really high because they know somebody’s got to go at that certain day. Usually if something like a wedding or something like that.

So the price is really high because somebody knows they have to be on that plane and then as we get in between, the price will go down again and then as you get a little bit closer out, like this sweet spot when they know most people are booking, the price will go back up again. They keep fluctuating and playing with that price, trying to fill the plane with this much dollars as they can per seat and as we get a little bit closer then they start getting nervous and they got too many seats and the price will go back down again until they fill some of those and then they get down to just the last couple. Then generally they’ll Jack it right back up. Cause again they know somebody’s got to get on that plane whether it’s to hit a funeral or they got to go to a business meeting or whatever it is.

And so those last minutes are either really cheap or really expensive depending on how many seats they have available. It’s all a game and I don’t begrudge them this. They’re trying to make as much money off of theirs. I tried to make as much money off of my rental business and they’re trying to make as much money off their planes. Same thing with the tourists, so they’re all just trying to juggle to find that sweet spot they want to sell out, but at the highest price possible, our job is the opposite. We want to get that trip to the least price possible. If you haven’t listened to episode number seven on how to get cheap flights, I would refer you to that and also put a link in the show notes for you. That’s got a lot of helpful hints of making sure we do not overpay for our airfares and so to make sure we are doing our job of paying the least amount possible, particularly for solo supplements.

Let’s move on to number six. This is a biggie. If you don’t see it advertised, ask, ask for the waiver. It never hurts to ask. Try reaching out on social media directly to the company and asked, for example, could you weigh the sole supplement on the April cycling tour of Tuscany, give them a specific trip, date and destination and see what they say. They might just say yes and I encourage you to try this directly on social media. Direct message them to ask because a lot of times the people that are monitoring the social sites have a little bit more say than the agent that you might be working with over the phone. Don’t hesitate to ask. Even if they say no, they might still give you a discount and there’s no downside. Ask or if they say no, say would a different date make a difference because maybe they have a lot of vacancies and another timeframe.

Ask. Maybe it’s not the time, maybe it’s the destination you want to go to Southeast Asia. Is it really critical that you go to Vietnam or Lao or Cambodia be just as good for this trip? I mean there’s always another time ask. There’s lots of variables and you don’t know where the tour company is. Headaches and their their vacancies are so probe, ask number six, take advantage of search before you book anything. Be sure to Google, no solo supplement plus whatever your destination is going to be and do the same with single supplement waived and your destination and the just see what pops up

and to make sure that you don’t miss out on any of the deals. Number seven, set up a Google alert for these searches. All right, the two that you just did. All right, and do the same for solo travel tours and also solo travel deals and with the Google alert, you just just Google Google alerts and it’ll send you to the page and then you can have these alerts sent to you on a daily or a weekly basis. I tend to do it weekly because I’m already inundated with emails, but whatever works for you, if time is of the essence, you may want to have it daily and sometimes the deals are only time-based and so you may want to get that on a daily basis.

Another method of reducing or eliminating your soul supplement. Thi is number eight, travel in the shoulder season instead. So the high season when they’re not 100% sure they’re going to fill the tours, they’re going to be more deals and more people travel obviously in the high season, which is why it’s called high season. So if you go on the shoulder season, which generally is the spring or the fall, you’re more likely to find deals on lodging and tours and stuff like that because they need to keep their employees working all year round for the most part. So they want to make sure they have those tours full even if they do it on a lesser profit margin. So traveling in the shoulder season can save you some money and I happened to find the weather usually more pleasant, even though it’s a little bit more changeable and variable in the change of seasons, but it’s always less crowded, which I like. A ninth way to eliminate the dreaded solo supplements is to consider alternative accommodations. You don’t pay a single supplement when you go camping, you pay for the site. It’s the same price. If it’s one tent or two, you don’t pay a single supplement. If you stay in a hostel or an Airbnb or vacation rental by owner BRBO, you might even get the whole house from somebody if you’re willing to house her pet sit. That’s how he snagged a house for two months in Costa Rico. Dog sat for two months.

When you’re looking at your adventure, consider how important is the lodging to your experience? For me, I don’t really care. Um, as long as it’s two and a half stars or better, I’m fine. I don’t really care. I don’t want to be in a dive with the roaches or anything. But if it’s basic, a combination sharing accommodations, I’m cool with that. But for other people, luxury, luxury is the vacation. That’s just not me. So look inside yourself. How important are the accommodations to you and particularly as it comes to spending your money?

Me, I’m like three-star, even get a little uncomfortable in the five stars and I certainly don’t mind roughing it. If it means I get to see something. Absolutely stunning. So consider opening your mind to alternative accommodations. If it means avoiding that single supplement, if you’re traveling solo but you’re open to it, consider number 10 and check out travel partner matching networks. More and more of these sites are popping up like mushrooms these days and they’re trying to solve the problem of that dreaded soul supplement charge. And a lot of solo travelers prefer to take a trip with somebody just so they can share the experience and to have somebody at the end of the day to talk about the day and finding a TravelMate eliminates that loneliness that often comes with traveling solo and you no longer traveling solo, so no more solo supplement fees. You can find a TravelMate on many of these matching services, but you want to make sure you’re really vetting your potential travel partner carefully. Get to know them by email, get on the phone, follow them on social media, get a good feel for the person before you actually say, yeah, let’s go ahead and let’s, let’s let’s room together.

You could also try looking for a partner on forums and in Facebook groups whenever the group allows you to do that. To find the current websites, just Google travel partner matching network and then see what pops up.

Number 11 this probably isn’t technically a way to save, but I want you to consider the total price of the trip. Let’s say you find a screaming deal on a tour. The tour itself is on a great sale or you find this amazing airfare. If you’re desperate to not pay that single supplement fee, you might not buy that whole trip altogether when the savings that you’re getting on, whatever the deal is on the airfare or the tour, more than makes up for what you had to pay for the single supplement. So look at the whole package. What? Where does this whole trip and a cost and see if that’s in line. If you’re getting a screaming deal, so maybe you cough up for the single supplement but you got 30% off on the tour. So look and compare at the total cost of your adventure. But listen, particularly when you see that things on sale, go back to number five, ask. Maybe you get the sale price and solo supplement waiver, ask for it. They can only say no and then you’re back where you started anyway. Never be afraid to ask. The worst they could do is say no

and they’re liable to say yes

and finally number 12 track solo deals. Where before number seven we were tracking specific destinations with solo supplement waivers, never doing a broader search. We’re going to find out what are the solo deals in the entire universe and maybe we’ll let serendipity and opportunity help us plan our next adventure. One of my favorite resources for this is the solo traveler website at solo traveler, world.com on the deals page where it’s updated, I believe daily any deals that they find for solo travelers, so it’s a great site for a solo travelers to bookmark. I’m also on their email list so I get those notifications as well, so poke around on the deals page and see if you’ll see something that’ll work for you on the show notes page for this episode. I’m also going to have some other helpful links I think you’ll find useful. These links will also all be on the checklist that comes out with the newsletter as well.

Finding solo supplement deals or waivers is still a bit challenging at this point, but I see it as a problem that’s going to get better because over 40% of Americans are traveling solo in a given year and a third of Europeans and Australians are, and there’s a lot of Chinese, which is make up a huge chunk of the tourism trade right now are also traveling solo. So with all these people traveling, these tour companies and these hotels, they’ve got to appeal to us. So more and more they’re trying to figure out ways to do that that can still meet their budgets. So what may happen is those traveling as a couple may end up seeing their costs go up to help subsidize the solo travelers that the companies are trying to appeal to. I think we’re going to see a lot of jiggling around in the next decade or so as these companies try to address this massive new group of travelers that have hit in the last decade.

They want our business, but they know that we hate paying single supplements, so there will be some changes how this will all shake out. Time will tell, but companies are quite aware that solo supplements really irritate people. They feel ripped off in logic. We might see more studio type rooms that are catered to the solo traveler instead of couples and that might be one way that they tried to accommodate this growing group of travelers and with the tour companies, I think we’re going to see more and more doing the roommate matching situation. So you have the option. If you want your own room, you can pay for it. Otherwise they’re going to try to match you with the partner. The companies want happy customers, not irritated ones. Well, that’s one of the reasons Shar wrote me and said, Hey, how about doing an episode on soul supplements?

It’s ticking her off. I know it gets a micro. I’ve personally paid 50% extra in solo supplement fees. I can’t stand it, but I ended up coughing up the money. If I know at the end of the day for whatever the adventure is, I know I’m going to want my own room or sometimes I don’t have that option. I’m traveling by myself like a lot of my walking, not a lot of my walking is all I walk in holidays, I’m by myself, so I ended up paying a substantial solo supplement fee because of that, because they have all been in Europe and they priced their rooms assuming two people in the room, so I ended up paying a substantial amount and in solo supplement fees. Anytime I go to Europe on one of my trips, I really expect to see a lot of changes in this whole solo supplement thing in the next few years to decade and I will be updating the website for this episode on a regular basis as I find new resources and webpages and I hope you will also bookmark that so that you can take advantage of those resources when time comes for you to plan your next solo trip.

I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s episode and I hope that at least you got some on how to avoid the soul supplements. To me, my main ones that I use is the asking and going with companies like active adventures and adventure women that won’t make me pay a single supplement unless I want to make sure I have my own room. It’s big worldwide web out there. If you find resources, be sure to email me@kitatactivetraveladventures.com with a resource. I’d like to be able to update the website and keep it current with all the great things that we can find out there for us to let travelers and also let me know if you snagged a great deal. I’d love to hear from you. Thanks for listening. If you have a minute, please stop and take a minute to rate and review this podcast. I sure would appreciate it. I love getting your feedback. Until next time, this is kit parks at venture on.