Boldly Go Solo, now more convenient

You can now receive Boldly Go Solo via email. Plug your email address into the space provided at the top left of the home page and you will be alerted whenever there is a new post.

This is in addition to the blog feed you've always been able to get. Either way, continue to enjoy tips, trips and ideas for the active solo traveler.

Photo: Ellen Perlman. Valparaiso, Chile.

Comments

[Happy Hotelier]

E-mail is soo antique with all those newsreaders around.

I have another question for you to ponder:

Sometimes solo travelers are moaning about hotels' "surcharges". As a hotelier I am a bit mesmerized. Basically hoteliers sell rooms by the night, notwithstanding they sometimes are pricing rooms by the person and then come with a surcharge....what is your take?

[Ellen]

Thanks for your comment HH. All along, Boldly Go Solo has been available for your newsreader under "subscribe to this blog's feed." But you'd be surprised how many people do not use readers. I'd get people saying "I signed up but it didn't work."
HH, you are still ahead of a lot of the pack, whether you realize it or not.

Regarding the surcharges, I recently wrote a comment to someone else's blog that I don't understand the complaint. Hotels base their profit models on room rates, and tour operators tack on surcharges because of it. Solo travelers don't have much of a leg to stand on under the conventional model. But I've been thinking about this a lot lately because it comes up so often. Isn't it worth something to hotels to best their competitors by offering SOMETHING to solo travelers? I'm not a marketer. I don't know what that would be. Half price massage at the spa if you are traveling solo? Half price room if you book within a week of your stay? Half price room next time if you prove you were solo this time? Free entree at dinner? I don't know. Get creative. Attract solo travelers with something innovative so they stay at your hotel rather than someone else's. Make it a marketing draw. You tell me what it's worth to you to tap such a large market. Last numbers I read, some 30 percent of women are single at any given time, whether never married or recently divorced...and loads of them are hotel shopping for their vacations.