Traveling solo essentially costs double automatically because of lodging, and it kind of sucks there’s a double whammy with airfare where, unlike lodging, the penalty doesn’t actually make any sense.
I guess as a family be grateful that all hotel rooms come with a 50% (or more) discount per traveler?
Most single people own and sleep in double beds, so there's no sense in which a double bed is "designed to accomodate" two travellers.
The issue is more that discounted single room rates would encourage unofficial double stays, which would lose significant income.
I often book a double for myself (often for the same price or €10 more) for a bigger bed.
Hostels are for this market, no? Share physical infra (bathroom/heating/walls) with other humans (aka strangers) and you get the same family discount. You're not obligated to pay the premium unless you want your own bathroom and own personal space like families tend to want
As in: families don't get a discount, they just amortise the cost of privacy that you also seem to specifically need/want. but many solo travellers don't care to pay for that.
But if you're traveling with your family, just get hotel rooms. Hostels only came up in the first place in response to a gripe about solo travel.
I’ve seen a couple where they have a few solo cabins, but the amount of effort to surface this stuff turns me off to the whole thing.
The only reason I’m still half looking is that it seems like the easiest way for a random person to set foot on Antarctica, which would be a cool thing to check off the bucket list.
Cruises are probably more complicated because they price things other than your cabin into the "experience." (Though I think the Queen Mary 2 a few years back was slightly less than 2x for just me.) But the random Marriott doesn't really care if there is one of you or two when it comes to pricing.
I imagine 2 people use roughly twice the bedding, towels, toiletries, etc., on average.
You can easily verify this on Booking.com, where the search results show price per room and how it varies based on how many people are in that room and whether they're adults or children.
I'll say over the years most places do not respect the "if the towel is not on the floor don't replace it". I'm fine with reusing a towel to dry off twice, but some hotels change them every day, even when their signage is indicating a protocol to prevent that sort of waste.
Maybe that's the problem. Cruises rely on people spending a lot of extra money onboard the ship, or drink packages, nicer dinners, excursions, etc... fewer people doing that, with less social pressure to spend extra, means less money for them and they have to make it up somewhere.
Also the more people on the ship means more chances of selling high margin add ons like drink packages, excursions and so on.
also: be sure to make offerings to the sea gods before sailing because crossing the Drake Passage can be... exciting.
When I went there, I booked the cheapest bed (maybe $6500 in 2013) in a three-person cabin. It was early season and the ship wasn't full, so the company filled it with backpackers waiting for last-minute discounts in the hostels of Ushuaia. Because I had paid the full price, they upgrade me two classes to a much nicer two-person cabin. And then halfway through the trip, the ship delivered some staff to a museum. The other guy got their cabin, and I got the one we had shared.
Cruises are for folks, how to say it politely... who gave up on any form of adventure or excitement in their lives. Dont be that person, not yet at least.
There were quite a few solo travelers we met on the cruise, though - I think they mostly had solo inside cabins with no view.
You can make the argument that airlines are companies that sell in flight beverages and also happen to fly a passenger airplane. The actual profit comes from an unusual sources, like deals with credit card issues for a "rewards" program that gives you frequent flyer miles
Most of the more profitable markets have high competition not only by other airlines but also other forms of transportation. Very few airlines are swimming in cash and even those are only a couple bad years away from bankrupcy.
Personally, I do argue that it's worth it having tickets 10% more expensive and forcing the companies to always allocate all passengers, treat people humanely and etc. It's even worth it the 25% increase to make them let people carry luggage and avoid all the troubles that come with the optionality. But most governments seem to disagree.
You are asking for people who fly without checked luggage (as I usually do) to subsidize you.
Anyway, the fact that you just assumed I personally fly with luggage is weird.
Most people are ok with terrible service because they save money.
Doesn't stop them from complaining, though.
And yes, "cheapest" includes taxes and all fees.
You can fly from New York to Paris non-stop for $150 if you are patient and flexible. (Please please please call me a liar.)
If you are not patient $500 is more typical.
Twenty years ago was a $800 ticket.
Thirty years ago that was a $1000 ticket.
And you are not a liar - but your claim isn't true at all in Europe - see increased per-flight legislated fees and the loss of budget airlines. Price of flights between 2 destinations has increased by 25-40% in the last 5 years in most of Europe.
Thanks to efforts like increasing the per-flight fees "because of high inflation" (these fee increases are still going up several years later): https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/why-travel... and loss of airlines like Flybe.
You can still get the madly cheap hop flights, but they are often pricing in income from our flights (or accepting even negative returns by pricing above the per-flight fees) because the planes need to be where you are going to fly a profitable flight later.
So the old status quo where genuinely cheap flights could be booked on a 7 day basis (e.g. cheap thursday-thursday flights) has been replaced by convoluted patterns to get the cheap flights (you usually need to leave on Monday, return on Saturday (if your source airport has lower demand than the destination) or vice versa. I suggest based on flights in the US becoming cheaper, that this is due to government intervention.
I get saving the environment and all that. But let me pay more taxes monthly, don't charge the airline £15 minimum making a bunch of flights unviable. Don't make booking a holiday or conference flight so unpleasant and annoying. I always have to tradeoff wasting a day or two with paying 50-150 euros extra.
It's not the worlds biggest problem, but making that decision is a regular additional dilemma I didn't want in my life. I wish for the days when you could get just normal timetabled flights at good costs if the month (e.g. February) was unpopular for travel. Now those months really aren't cheaper.
Round trips in September are $386-500 depending on the day and duration of the stay. The $386 fare was for a tuesday-to-tuesday week stay and I might just take it, I will be bumping up against use-or-lose limits for PTO by then. There are fewer crowds in September and the weather is really nice.
With exceptions, once you have paid for a ticket all commercial passenger airlines are obligated to transport you under their contract of carriage.
All airlines must do this, I even looked up the contract of carriage for the shittiest airline I could think of and Frontier has this to say:
>Involuntary -- If insufficient passengers volunteer, passengers who cannot be accommodated on the flight will be denied boarding and Frontier will provide transportation on a Frontier flight to the same destination. After a passenger’s boarding pass is collected or scanned and accepted by the gate agent, and the passenger has boarded, a passenger may be removed from a flight only for safety or security reasons or in accordance with Section 3 of this Contract of Carriage.
They must also compensate you. If being denied boarding delays you for 1-2 hours you get 2x the cost of the fare up to $1550 and 2+ hours 4x up to $2150.
And they still have to put you on a plane:
>A passenger denied boarding, voluntarily or involuntarily, pursuant to this section, will be transported on Frontier’s next available flight on which space is available and at no additional charge.
https://www.flyfrontier.com/legal/contract-of-carriage
Contracts of carriage are pretty much boilerplate but all of this is to say: if you pay, show up on time, and aren't denied boarding for a safety reason airlines are obligated to transport you to your destination.
(in the US)
It's true that airlines wield pricing power but their Contract of Carriage, buried under more fine print than a payday loan agreement, does impose obligations. Rule 21 of United's Contract explicitly allows refusal of transport, but Rule 4 confirms that a ticket with a confirmed reservation constitutes a binding agreement to provide service, absent violations by the passenger (like failing to check in). Rule 25 further mandates denied boarding compensation when overselling occurs, because even in brutal airline economics, a confirmed reservation isn't merely a suggestion, it's a contractual commitment, however creatively airlines may interpret "commitment." Of course, involuntary bumping, force majeure, and the ever-convenient "operational decisions" let airlines off the hook. But to claim they have no obligations is not true.
Otherwise can’t one just rent the room as a solo guest, and just have someone come through later, as long as there isn’t an obvious group activity going on inside the room?
This is not always the case. A two-bedroom hotel suite on average costs more than two standard rooms. This happens because the vast majority of rooms are twin/double and cheap hotels often don't offer suites at all.
At a given location two travellers would be chosing from e.g 100 options and at least some of these would be budget/discount offerings. In the same location a family of four would have to chose from 10 options and likely none of them are budget/discount.
Now consider that you HAVE to travel during the school holidays so competition for these damn 10 options increases and the price for both hotels and tickets easily goes up 2-3x.
There are some situations where a family of four would get a better price per person but most of the time it's the other way round.
You can always stay in Motel 6 for $20/night.
Frozen > 5kg or so?
I'm pitching the movie to the Hallmark channel right now.
The cost for the hotel and Airbnb doesn't really change a lot, if there is more than one person staying in the room. More or less another set of towels and a bit more soap. Even providing rooms with single beds only brings down the costs marginally.
Travelling with somebody else brings costs down. Hotel rooms have the same surface for single and double occupancy (in fact they are usually the same rooms!). Even if you remove the surface of one single bed, the room stays almost the same. So, it’s much cheaper for 2.
I’ve regularly seen larger cars with more capacity equal to medium sedans.
1. I don't want to stay in a hostel. See below for more on this; but, hostels, at least the ones I have researched, have bunk rooms and shared facilities. Hard pass for me.
2. I don't like sharing a bedroom and, especially, a bathroom in someone's home when they may be there. There's simply a different level of security (potentially false, I understand) in a hotel vs a rented room in a house.
"Hostel" may mean different things in different parts of the world. When I was growing up, I heard about "youth hostels" that were mostly in Europe and mostly providing inexpensive accommodations to college-age people who were backpacking through the continent or had a Eurail Pass for traveling, etc. But I have never stayed in one.
When I surveyed a few hostels in Hollywood, it seemed that they were indeed targeting college-age people. Furthermore, they were cultivating a "package deal" atmosphere where there were day trips and coffee hours and programmed activities, for residents to do while they were there. And with limited privacy and shared facilities, there could be bustling activity and interruptions of sleep all night long. They did not seem like places to check in, crash overnight and leave in the morning. And that is probably calculated to appeal to the clientele who are not homeless and did not simply save up $40 by panhandling during the past week.
It comes out of the family budget either way.
DINK > Solo >> anything else