If you’ve ever looked into booking a holiday as a solo traveller and felt a creeping sense of injustice at the pricing — you’re not imagining things.
The single supplement is one of the travel industry’s most widely resented practices. And if you’re a solo traveller who hasn’t encountered it yet, you will. Here’s everything you need to know — including exactly how to avoid it.
What Is a Single Supplement?
A single supplement is an additional fee charged to solo travellers who occupy a hotel room or cabin alone.
Here’s how it works. Hotels and tour operators price their rooms on the assumption that two people will share them. The room rate is calculated per room, then divided by two to give a per-person price. When a solo traveller books the same room alone, the operator still charges for the full room — meaning the solo traveller pays what two people would pay between them.
In practice, single supplements typically add between 30% and 100% to the advertised per-person price of a tour or cruise. To put that in real terms: a tour advertised at A$5,000 per person (based on two sharing) might cost a solo traveller A$7,500 or even A$10,000 once the single supplement is added. For the exact same tour. The exact same room. The exact same experience.
It is, by any reasonable measure, a penalty for travelling alone.
Why Do Single Supplements Exist?
The honest answer is: because the mainstream travel industry was built around couples and families, and solo travellers were an afterthought.
Hotel and cruise pricing models were designed decades ago when the typical traveller was part of a couple or family group. The infrastructure — rooms, cabins, tables — was built for pairs. When solo travellers began booking in increasing numbers, operators didn’t redesign their pricing models. They simply charged solo travellers more to make up the revenue shortfall.
There’s a degree of legitimate economics involved — a solo traveller genuinely does occupy a full room that could otherwise house two people paying separately. But the scale of the surcharge — often 50% or more — goes well beyond recovering that cost. It’s a premium charged simply because solo travellers have historically had no alternative.
Until now.
How Single Supplements Work on Cruises
Cruises are where solo travellers often feel the single supplement most acutely. Ocean cruises in particular can carry significant single supplements, making solo cruising considerably more expensive than travelling as part of a couple. This is an industry-wide pricing challenge rather than a deliberate policy by any one operator — it reflects the way cruise ships are designed and priced, with cabins built for two.
Which is why Two’s a Crowd pioneered the world’s first solos-only river cruise charter. By filling an entire vessel exclusively with solo travellers, the single supplement equation changes completely. There’s no “missing” second person — everyone is travelling alone, and the pricing reflects that.
How Single Supplements Work on Tours
On land-based group tours, single supplements are applied when the tour operator can’t pair you with another solo traveller to share a room. Many mainstream operators offer “roommate matching” — pairing solo travellers together to avoid the supplement — but this means sharing a room with a complete stranger for the duration of your holiday. For most solo travellers, this is not an appealing solution.
The supplement varies by operator and destination. Budget operators may charge 20-30% extra. Premium operators can charge 50-100%. And on some tours, particularly to remote destinations with limited accommodation options, the supplement can be even higher.
The Real Cost of Single Supplements
Let’s look at what single supplements actually cost over time. A solo traveller taking two significant overseas holidays per year, each with a 50% single supplement applied to a base price of A$5,000, pays an extra A$5,000 per year — A$50,000 over a decade — simply for the privilege of travelling alone.
That’s not a small amount. That’s another holiday. Several of them.
How to Avoid Paying a Single Supplement
Here are the most effective strategies:
1. Book with a solos-only tour operator The most effective solution by far. When every traveller in the group is solo, the entire pricing model changes. There’s no paired pricing to begin with — rates are calculated per person from the start, meaning single supplements are either very low or don’t exist at all. This is the Two’s a Crowd model, and it’s why solo travellers consistently tell us they save significant money compared to booking mainstream tours.
2. Travel during shoulder season Some operators reduce or waive single supplements during less popular travel periods when they’re struggling to fill tours. If flexibility is possible, travelling in shoulder season can significantly reduce costs.
3. Book early Some operators offer early booking incentives that include reduced single supplements. The earlier you commit, the more negotiating room there sometimes is.
4. Ask directly It never hurts to ask an operator whether the single supplement can be reduced or waived — particularly if you’re a returning customer or booking multiple tours. The worst they can say is no.
5. Solos-only cruises and charters As with land tours, choosing a cruise that is exclusively chartered for solo travellers eliminates the single supplement problem entirely. Two’s a Crowd was the first company in the world to operate a solos-only river cruise charter — and continues to do so.
6. Check the fine print carefully Some operators advertise low headline prices but apply significant single supplements in the booking process. Always check the total price for a solo traveller before comparing operators — the advertised per-person price is often meaningless without this context.
What “Low or No Single Supplements” Actually Means
At Two’s a Crowd, we use the phrase “low or no single supplements” deliberately and honestly. Here’s what it means in practice:
No single supplement means exactly that — the price you see is the price you pay, with no additional charge for travelling alone.
Low single supplement means there is an additional charge, but it is always below 30% of the per-person tour price — significantly less than the industry standard of 50-100%.
The Bottom Line
Single supplements are a systemic challenge in the travel industry — one that has made solo travel more expensive than it should be for decades. The good news is that the solo travel market has grown dramatically, and operators who continue to price solo travellers poorly are increasingly losing them to specialists who don’t.
The single most effective way to avoid single supplements is to travel with a company that was built specifically for solo travellers — where the pricing model starts from the assumption that everyone is travelling alone, not as an afterthought.
That’s what Two’s a Crowd has been doing since 2012.
👉 Browse our current solo travel tours — all with low or no single supplements →
By Bernie Bruggeman, Tour Operations Manager, Two’s a Crowd — Australia’s leading solo travel company since 2012.
