Group tours for singles open world of travel
By Catherine Artman
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, April 12, 2009
You don't have to be single to rub boars and doors.
You don't even have to be single to go on a singles tour.
I, however, am. As my friends got married, I gained
bridesmaid dresses and lost my travel companions.
I still wanted to gallivant, but not by myself.
Among my dream destinations, Italy's Florence awaited. One of
that city's myriad sights is a bronze boar in the straw market
that passersby pat for luck. In Pisa, I pressed on a certain
portal — another way, I was told, to assure good fortune.
But perhaps I already had found my luck. I might never had
gotten to Italy in the first place if I hadn't discovered group
tours for singles.
It sounds like an oxymoron: group singles travel. But it was
easy for me to see the appeal of traveling with an entire
entourage of single people:
• Having an assigned roommate means avoiding the singles
supplement. Organizations that arrange group tours for singles
will pair up the passengers, although single rooms sometimes are
available for people who would rather pay more than share.
• It guarantees that my cabinmate and I aren't the only
singles on a cruise ship full of honeymooners.
• You save money by traveling with a group tour, because the
tour provider gets discounted prices for buying in bulk. Suzy
Davis, owner of Adventures for Singles in Atlanta, says she
tries to cap a group's size at 40. Her relatively big groups —
she says some companies book groups no larger than 16, which is
her minimum — help her to negotiate good deals toward her goal
of offering an "upscale, five-star experience at a three-star
price."
• Group tours are an answer for singles who say they are too
busy to plan a vacation. Because the group-tour provider and
guides do all the planning and take care of details, "you can
leave your brain at home," Davis assures clients. In planning an
itinerary, a tour designer makes contacts and does research that
can open doors a traveler might not find by himself. "I'm able
to arrange opportunities through group travel that are
impossible for people to do on their own," Davis says.
• There's safety in numbers. Jennifer Reynoso, 47, a nurse
from of Santa Rosa, Calif., has done two singles tours, both
through Adventures for Singles. Her first trip was to the Amazon
and Brazil. "The thought of group travel did not appeal to me,"
she says, but she wanted to see exotic locales and "not have to
worry about finding someone to go."
"London, if I wanted to, I could do on my own," Reynoso says.
"I could go to Mexico. But when it comes to more exotic
locations, (there are places) I would not go alone."
For my first singles trip, I started small. A four-day cruise
in the Bahamas set me back only $550, airfare included, partly
because I signed up for a four-person cabin. I figured I was
bound to get along with at least one of my roommates, and if I
didn't, the trip would be over soon anyway.
My gamble paid off marvelously. My three cabinmates and I got
along so well that, as the days went by, we all swore our cabin
was expanding in size, rather than closing in on us.
Many years since, I still trade Christmas cards with one of
those cabinmates, a Tennessean named Cheryl.
And for a while, I stayed in touch with two other members of
our tour group, a couple of men from Pittsburgh. I was living in
Buffalo at the time of the Bahamas cruise, but had harbored the
idea of returning to my native North Hills. Eventually, one of
my post-cruise correspondents, who lived in Emsworth, gave me a
lead on the job that did, indeed, bring me back to the 'Burgh.
No other singles tour has so drastically changed my life.
It was the people, not the destination, that distinguished
that short cruise.
In later travels, the destination — Egypt, Thailand, Europe —
has been much more important. During these singles tours, it's
the places we went, the sights we saw, that thrilled me. And
yet, the companions on those trips made the journeys more fun
and interesting, and are inextricable from the memories. I
wouldn't have smoked a hookah pipe in Cairo if I hadn't been in
the company of fun women from Texas and California. In Italy,
another Californian, Teresa, and I broke apart from the group
for several short excursions. One day, we used a free half-hour
to go to the top of the bell tower in St. Mark's Plaza for a
terrific view of Venetian rooftops.
After the Italy trip, one of the men in the group, a fiscal
officer for a Texas manufacturer, wrote to me: "As I look at my
photographs, I detect a shift in my focus. The early photos all
are of buildings, but by the end of the week, my snapshots are
of people."
Indeed, "on every trip, people meet as strangers and return
as friends" says Davis, who founded Adventures for Singles 18
years ago. Fellowship and commonality are the earmarks of group
singles travel, she says. "Everyone shares the same common
denominators: They love to travel, and they've been dreaming of
that destination."
Tammy Weiler of Boca Raton, Fla., who started Singles Travel
International 15 years ago, also says her company thrives on
singles' dual desires for travel and company.
They don't want to wait for Mr. or Ms. Perfect Travel
Companion, Weiler says. "They want to travel and just do it
now." But, she says, "Singles want to make a connection, not
necessarily romantic, but just connect with other people."
Weiler's company maintains an on-line community similar to
Facebook, so
that customers can see ahead of time who else is booked for a
trip and hold virtual "private chats."
"The first day of the singles trip is the most stressful,
because nobody knows anybody," Weiler says. But now, thanks to
the online endeavor, "It seems like it's not such a cold splash
of water if they already know everybody by e-mail."
Because 70 percent of Davis' clients are repeat customers,
many of her travelers already do know each other.
Davis says 97 to 100 percent of every group her company books
is single.
But not all singles group travelers are unattached; some have
partners at home who can't or don't travel.
There's no way to scan for singlehood, but if a prospective
client offers up the fact that he or she is married, "we turn
them down," Singles Travel International's Weiler says. If
someone wants to bring along, as her roommate, a friend or
sister who is married, it's OK, Weiler says, "but we make it
clear that our group is predominately single, and (the married
person) may not be comfortable."
For me, being in the company of other singles has been fun
and comfortable. It's not unusual to find a dinner conversation
centered on dating, single parenthood or other single-centric
topics.
My trip to Greece was a group tour, but not a singles tour. I
was befriended during it by two wonderful couples, one from
Australia and one from Thailand. Sightseeing, shopping and
dining with my new travel friends was terrific -- but I was the
"fifth wheel." That "odd woman out" situation seldom arises when
I travel with singles. Even if some couples form, the rest of
the group is unattached.
The fact that most singles groups contain more women than men
helps to assure that not everyone is going to pair off.
Davis and Weiler both have the goal of a woman-man ratio of
60-40, but say it's tougher to sign up men than women. Men, they
say, tend to put off vacation plans until the last minute,
whereas, "Women book first: They set their travel goals; they
save money and make it happen," Davis says.
Still, an obvious advantage for a single to take a singles
group tour is the chance for romance. The flip side, of course,
is that the vacation romance usually ends at the airport, and
sometimes someone feels hurt.
During my Italy tour, my pal from Texas told me he enjoyed
the attention he got from the women on singles excursions, but
that he had grown wary of liaisons. "There's no sense in getting
involved," he said, "because when the week ends, it's sayonara."
All singles tour companies stress that they are not a dating
service. Still, 14 marriages, including her own, have been
byproducts of Davis' trips. Davis sends a "tour leader" on every
trip to accompany the travelers. It was during one trip, when
Davis herself was the tour leader, that she met Terry Pawelko.
Now they are married and run the tour company together.
During Reynoso's second singles trip, to Thailand in
November, the California nurse hit it off with a male passenger
from Washington state. They have been dating since.
Nevertheless, "I do not think singles trips are 'Love Boats'
or flirtation expeditions," Reynoso says. Many more women than
men were along on her first trip, she says, and romance wasn't
much of an option. So, "I definitely didn't expect anything the
second time," she says.
As it turned out, several twosomes formed among the Thailand
passengers, and most of the couples tended to peel away from the
rest of the group.
But deciding to spend much of the time with one person "is
not to take away from the group and being with the group,"
Reynoso says. "It's just nice to ... know you have somebody to
talk to. You don't have to do everything together all the time."
Besides, Reynoso says of partnering with a fellow passenger,
"It doesn't have to be sexual or flirtatious or anything." A
travel buddy "doesn't have to be a guy. It could be a roommate.
It's just someone who you meet and get along with." |
