It's probably also worth noting that the majority of these hotels and Airbnbs are also designed to accommodate two or more travelers. Thus the complaint isn't really "single-person rooms are priced that same as two-person rooms," but rather "single-person rooms don't exist, which means I have to pay for more space than I need." In this sense it's not really any different than any other product that you wish was sold in smaller quantities.

It's probably a bit of a mixed bag. Beds are reasonable for two people (Usually a queen/king or a couple queens). But there may be only one sitting chair. Two people can manage but hotels split the difference a lot of the time.

The difference in costs between accommodating one person and two people is pretty minimal. Even things like breakfasts are prepared in bulk.

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 doubt the difference is minimal. Forget the size of beds, the point is that a hotel with 200 single-person rooms has twice the beds, twice the bathrooms, roughly twice the walls, etc. than a hotel with 100 two-person rooms.

A hotel hosting 100 single people will be roughly the same size and operating costs as a hotel hosting 100 couples, even if the rooms had a 3’ bed rather than a 6’ bed And thus could be 3’ smaller

Right, but the former hotel has half the capacity as the latter.

At least here in Europe there are plenty of hotels with solo traveller rooms (<=120 cm beds). But still not uncommonly priced at 80-95% of a double occupancy doublebed-room.

I often book a double for myself (often for the same price or €10 more) for a bigger bed.

The room will be about the same size as a room with a double bed in, so 80% seems a massive difference

> Traveling solo is already brutal because hotels and Airbnbs are priced on the assumption of two travelers

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.

Cruises are especially bad for this. I’ve never gone, but I’ve looked at but after I had 3 independent people tell me to take one in the span of a few months. Most are priced assuming 2 people in the room and if you’re solo it seems like they expect you to buy 2 spots.

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.

>if you’re solo it seems like they expect you to buy 2 spots

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.

Why wouldn’t they care?

I imagine 2 people use roughly twice the bedding, towels, toiletries, etc., on average.

If there's two beds, maybe. If one bed, doesn't matter how many people sleep in it. Maybe twice the towels?

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.

2 vs 1 doesn’t significantly impact space or cleaning labor, unless you’re staying in a super minimalist itty bitty unit (which I rarely find exists anymore)

Well, they mostly don't. They're often using the same bedding. Most toiletries are squirt containers these days. I don't think toilet paper is that expensive. And another towel or two to wash is probably not a big deal. And to the degree the hotel has a restaurant or bar they probably come out ahead. Your hotel may take a different approach but it's near universal (perhaps outside of resorts) that hotels charge the same for 1 or 2 guests.

Citation needed. In my experience it's entirely the opposite: it's nearly universal that hotels charge more for two guests than one.

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.

Price only varies for the breakfast-included option in my experience.

I don't care to do research. I will say when I book on Marriott.com there's never a difference. I don’t use booking.com much though.

Is this a non-U.S. thing perhaps? I’ve never in my life seen a U.S. hotel charge more for double occupancy, outside of special packages that include e.g. meals for each guest.

The other things priced into the "experience" are why I call out cruises separately. With a hotel, I get it, a room is a room. But a solo cruiser is eating half the food, drinking half the drinks, taking up half as many seats at shows...

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.

Isn't the cruise capacity still limited by the number of rooms? So saving peanuts on drinks and cheap food probably doesn't make that big of a difference for them.

There are a couple travel agencies in Ushuaia that sell open cabins at steep discount for cruises heading across the Drake Passage. If you've got a little flexibility in your schedule, you can set foot in Antarctica for a lot less than if you bought a ticket anywhere else.

Cruises are selling a set space rather than a service or trip per person. The extra incremental cost is minimal for the second person.

Also the more people on the ship means more chances of selling high margin add ons like drink packages, excursions and so on.

Ease is relative especially considering cost, but that's the kind of thing that having a good travel agent is good for (eg: finding someone with knowledge of where to stay in Chile and who to hire for a charter flight or boat trip). Economies of scale kinda kick in though so a cruise is probably the least expensive.

Some cruise lines, like Norwegian, have specific solo travel fares and cabins and even social events just for solo travelers

Ships going to Antarctica often offer single beds in shared cabins.

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.

Go to Ushuaia, and book a normal ship just like all other folks do. You will have 100x more rewarding experience from all of it, guaranteed. Its not just destination but whole road to it that make such trips worthwhile and you will keep remembering it for rest of your days.

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.

I just invited myself along on a "girl's cruise" to Alaska that my wife was doing with her friend (who's actually my second cousin). As the third person in the cabin, my fare only cost $99, plus some fees, compared the several thousand each my wife and cousin paid.

There were quite a few solo travelers we met on the cruise, though - I think they mostly had solo inside cabins with no view.

It is strange balance, but in cruising there is expectation that money is spend outside the base fare on extra experiences. So getting double money from double occupancy is important. Cost of basic food doesn't scale that much. And these extra revenue opportunities is also why occupancy beyond double is so much cheaper.

(Saying all this with respect for those who value privacy more than me )

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.

There’s a very big difference between sharing sleeping space with multiple complete strangers and sharing space with family.

The point is you are paying for one bed, one living area, one bathroom, whether you are a single traveller or as a couple. I’m in a hotel room at the moment with a bed and a sofa, can host 4 people or me, it’s the same size. At breakfast I usually sit on a table which can seat 4, but certainly one that can seat 2. I use almost all the resources a couple do, and spend less at the bar in the evening, so I’d expect to pay the same or even more.

Hostels often offer private rooms, to varying degree of privacy. But i've certainly stayed at hostels that offer very comfortable single private rooms with private bathrooms for a third the cost of a local hotel room. Expensive for a hostel, but great value for the privacy.

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 done hostel and like that option when there is a private room. I often/always travel with electronics and things that I want to feel comfortable leaving behind, and I don’t like leaving my laptop and game consoles unattended in communal spaces.

I don't really find this relevant in the US because airline pricing is already the ultimate brutal form of pricing. Not only are they allowed to bill you whatever they want, they are never under any actual obligation to put you on the plane.

> they are never under any actual obligation to put you on the plane.

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.

>Not only are they allowed to bill you whatever they want, they are never under any actual obligation to put you on the plane.

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)

"next available flight" could mean waiting 2 days in a random airport, hardly reassuring

One of my co-workers had a flight delayed so long that the alternative flight they offered would have him stay on the plane at the destination airport and begin his home journey immediately.

"denied boarding" seems pretty key here. What about when the airline decides you aren't on the flight in the first place?

This seems surprising to me. I was under the impression that airlines are pretty low profit margin industries, pulling in only around 3-4% in a decent year, and that of that the airline tickets themselves are the lowest margin items percentage wise, with other things like baggage fees being much more load bearing.

You are correct. As much as we like to bash airlines and their decisions, and liking low fares and quality service myself, it's objectively one of the worst businesses imaginable. Extremely high risk, low margin. Every year about a dozen airlines go bankrupt, get merged or bailed out. A small increase in the price of oil is a major risk for most of them.

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.

You'd like Milton Friedman and his take on pilot Unions too.

Knowing Friedman's other takes, probably not.

As the saying goes. The best way to be a millionaire running an airline is to start as a billionaire.

The fact that their brutally anti-consumer business is also not even that profitable for them is really no consolation to the consumer.

Yes it is, because it's the reason why air travel is extremely cheap relative to historical norms.

That's actually exactly the consolation I look for as a consumer, thanks.

Depending on which party you're talking about (airport, airline, etc), a no-bag economy ticket is often below cost, which is made up in volume and extras.

This is correct, the single passenger 'economy' ticket is usually a loss leader.

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

They are a low profit business, and that kind of liberty is stuff that pushes their profits even lower. They also always fail to differentiate from one another and are always competing on only price and how much fees they can keep hidden.

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.

> It's even worth it the 25% increase to make them let people carry luggage

You are asking for people who fly without checked luggage (as I usually do) to subsidize you.

Sure, you would subside people flying with luggage. It also reduces the time planes stay on the ground, stops the fighting between passengers for the always full luggage bins, clears the seats in case of emergency, and eliminates the largest hidden fee companies manage to put on their prices.

Anyway, the fact that you just assumed I personally fly with luggage is weird.

A piece of luggage is on the same other of magnitude as the variance in human weight so either way there is plenty of "subsidizing" going on.

Airfare is the cheapest it has been in the entire history of commercial aviation except for immediately after 9/11 and the initial weeks of the global covid lockdown-- but both you and I know those periods don't count.

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.

What's your patient/flexible technique? Let me know.

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.

If calling you a liar gets me a no-stop ticket from America to Paris for only 150 bucks, then you're a liar.

All I did was go to Expedia and put in JFK and CDG and $149 on Tuesday, July 15th on Norse Atlantic Airways popped up. Return flights the next week were $200-300. Round trip with a one-week stay were ~$500.

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.

https://imgur.com/Wn43raL

Some countries (e.g. Japan) charge per person in non-Western hotels. Even then, you may get different prices for a solo traveler because the lower overall price means they need to increase the per person rate to make enough margin with their fixed costs.

They do this in Mexico as well. Always just seems like an honor system thing unless they are checking people at the door to the hotel and/or room each time they enter, which only seems realistic in very small hotels who have no e.g. restaurant open to the public.

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?

Why do people put locks on glass doors? Society only works because of the assumption that ~90% of people will follow the rules.

Are you going to bring your own sheets and breakfast as well?

I don’t know about yours, but my spouse is OK with sharing sheets with me.

Depends on region. In many places a hotel room for two guests has two beds that are either separate or together. So make sure you book a king size bed, and also buy one of those fake moustache-and-glasses for your wife so nobody suspects anything at breakfast. Or she can wait in the room and you'll sneak some scrambled eggs and bacon from the buffet in your coat pockets for her.

Or they could just go eat real food instead of the bargain bin garbage served as free breakfast in most hotels.

Why wouldn't you just stay in a hostel? or rent a room on airbnb?

For two reasons:

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.

Families who travel together also share rooms and facilities, so if that's a hard pass for you then you wouldn't be happy with the "discount" of traveling as part of a family either.

I appreciate the pedantry; but, there’s a significant difference between several random someone(s) having travelers diarrhea in a shared bathroom and my family.

The point is multiple people sharing facilities get discounts. It’s nothing more sinister than that. The hotel charges per room, and rooms include facilities. The costs for the hotel don’t depend on how many people are staying in that room.

Right, but my point is that you're now no longer complaining about the concept of offering discounts for room-sharing. Now you're complaining that there's no one you would be comfortable sharing a room with.

No; I’m complaining about the alternatives listed.

Reframing it to how it sounds to me: you'd like to temporarily reserve a massive amount of real estate (relative to your human body) from a city's housing reserve and not be forced to pay any more for that than the family who would put 4 people in that same footprint.

It may have been 5 years ago or so, yes late 2020, when I had a ridiculous idea to visit Hollywood to see a concert. And I considered staying in a hostel in the area.

"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.

You can make the same argument about food too: buying chicken at Costco is way cheaper per pound than in Whole Foods or Aldi. Are they also penalizing single people? No: buy more, pay less per unit.

You can’t freeze a hotel room.

https://www.icehotel.com/ :D

The hotel also cannot easily split and recombine rooms and beds on demand. They have to decide upfront how many single-person and two-person rooms to build, based on what they perceive the market desires.

Hotel rooms can’t get spoiled.

You can always stay in Motel 6 for $20/night.

In my experience they often already come pre-frozen and room service will helpfully re-freeze them if you set a more reasonable temperature.

What packs do you buy where it is much more cheaper?

Frozen > 5kg or so?

I see people complaining a lot about single traveler (with their own room) surcharges on both group and self-guided trips. But, you're right, while per-person-double-occupancy rates make it explicit, it's pretty much the norm at most hotels whether stated as such or not.

How are 2 travelers priced in? If I rent a 4 passenger car are 4 people priced in?

Would a van cost more to rent then a sedan?

different scenario; more appropriate would be the same car with zero or 1,2, or more passengers.

yes (car rental prices are mostly a function of size)

Only when you're comparing the cheapest vehicles of each size, where the cost of the vehicle and maintenance is probably roughly in line with vehicle size. There are plenty of luxury and sports cars widely available for rent that will cost more than a minivan.

But in reality, rarely. The pricing is mostly a function of luxury AND space.

I’ve regularly seen larger cars with more capacity equal to medium sedans.

The fair comparison is for price in the same luxury class otherwise it’s like comparing economy to 1st class tickets.

Hostels are wonderful for single traveling, though. And that's in spite of the fact that hostels also have bulk discounts.

Looks like the deal is to find someone else who wants to go the same way and then buy the tickets together.

I'm pitching the movie to the Hallmark channel right now.

When travelling on your own just go to hostels instead of hotels and you-ll both pay much less (prices normally are per person, not per room) and you'll meet more people who are open to interacting with other solo travellers.

> Traveling solo essentially costs double automatically because of lodging

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.

provided you have someone to go with :)

In Japan, you pay by the person when it comes to hotels. Some will give you a slight discount for the second person. Others won’t.

kids dont make any income. a weekend trip for 4 in the same timezone costs us $3k to 5k. a cross country trip is 10-20k.

DINK > Solo >> anything else

> I guess as a family be grateful that all hotel rooms come with a 50% (or more) discount per traveler?

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.

That doesn't make sense - the family in your example has 110 options whereas the single traveler only has 100.

You could look at it that way, but in practice I don’t actually divide travel costs by the number of people who go.

It comes out of the family budget either way.

Airplane travel doesn't mean you actually need to pay for accommodations - visiting friends and family is also a thing.