Cruise Lines

How great to see that Island Cruises has halved its single supplement for Med cruises outside the summer peak this year. Now it's just £210 extra for holidaymakers travelling alone, although that is for an inside cabin.

Cruising is a great holiday for people travelling on their own, but not if they have to pay 100% supplements.

So come on guys. You all want to get more people cruising, so why not do more to get singles on board? Their money is as good as anyone else's when it comes to buying drinks, excursions and the like.

Cunard is to ease the strain for single travellers in 2009, cutting the single supplement on Queen Mary 2 from 100% to 75% and even 50% on some voyages during April and on May 2 and 8 for those who get in quick.

It's about time. We hear so often - from the cruiselines themselves - what a wonderful holiday a cruise is for people on their own. And as one who regularly cruises on my own I agree. Except for those swingeing supplements.

Could this new-for-2009 decision have anything to do with Carnival UK chief commercial officer Peter Shanks' prediction in his company's 2008 cruise report that by 2020 we will have waved goodbye to single supplements?

I didn't realise at the time that actually he was hinting about what was to come rather than playing soothsayer, but now I look back at those words of wisdom, I see he also predicted that we would have (hopefully) figured out a foolproof way of smashing champagne bottles on the side of new ships.

Enter the Royal Marines, who will be guaranteeing a smashing time this week when P&O Cruises' Ventura is named in Southampton by Dame Helen Mirren.

I know I for one am going to listen more closely to Shanks' crystal-ball gazing. His obviously works better than Mystic Meg's.

There's never been a better time to go cruising on your own.

Elegant River Cruises, part of Connections, which is the independent travel division of Titan Travel, is offering no single supplements to travellers who book a spring cruise before December 31. It means a potential saving of nearly £2,500.

Now Oceania Cruises has slashed the single supplement on Far East and Australia cruises on Nautica between December 2008 and April 2009, cutting it from 100% to 50%.

I reckon we'll see a lot more offers for singles over the coming weeks as lines pull out all the stops to fill their ships in these credit-crunching times.

Agents should urge clients travelling along to make the most of it and who knows? Maybe the cruise lines will discover a hidden market and the lower supplements will stick.

Or maybe not. But it's a nice thought.

Seems Carnival Cruise Lines was not very impressed when it hosted a pack of cougars and cubs on Carnival Elation last month.

Those are the names given to older women out to have no-strings-attached fun with younger men - and the men who are up for it. CougarEvents.com had arranged for 300 of them to be on the ship.

By all accounts all was fine, but clearly the self-styled Fun Ship operator has decided there is such a thing as too much fun because when SinglesTravelCompany.com tried to book a group on a Carnival ship, the cruise line said no.

The Miami Herald quotes a rather piqued Stewart Chiron, chief executive of CruiseGuy.com, as saying couger cruises don't fit Carnival's "squeaky clean image".

Maybe not, but that's great news for Royal Caribbean International and Norwegian Cruise Line, which apparently have no qualms about allowing man-hungry female cruisers on board.

The paper reports that the singles will now be on a Mexican Riviera cruise on Royal's Mariner of the Seas in May while the cougars are booked on a three-day cruise from Miami on Norwegian Sky from December 3-6.

You have been warned. Or should that be alerted? Personally, I'm more intrigued by ABTA's pre-Christmas forecast that naked cruising is one of the emerging trends for 2010.

I can see all sorts of benefits, not least the fact that you can leave the DJ and cocktail dress at home. I guess also you really can be sure there are no strings attached and if there are, at least you'll spot them!

You'd want to be cruising somewhere warm, though, and I hope the cruise lines have the foresight to go easier on the air-con in the dining rooms. All those naked bodies is one thing, but naked bodies sitting around covered in goosebumps?

It would quite put you off the Baked Alaska.

Finally one of the big cruise lines has broken away from the pack and acknowledged that single cruisers are nice people to have on board after all.

I say that with all due respect to P&O Cruises, which is building new ship Azura (launching in April) with 18 single cabins. I thought that was a positive step.

But on Wednesday evening, NCL announced that the 128 Studio cabins on its new ship Norwegian Epic, launching in June, will go on sale as single rooms from January 18.

They will cost from £599 per person for a seven-night Caribbean cruise (excluding flights), which NCL claimed did not to contain any of that dreaded single supplement.

Out of interest, I checked my brochure, published way before this announcement, and that quotes Studios from £479 per person with up to 100% supplement for a single person.

I was also told that in response to a question during the annoucement, NCL said the per person price will be slightly lower if two people are shoehorned into one of these tiny Studios - they are 100 square feet, which means you can take your cat but cancel all thoughts of swinging it - which means there is a very small supplement.

But hey, for £599 who really cares? The room might be small, but Studio passengers get access to their own lounge where they can go to watch TV, have a drink and make friends. It's brilliant if you are travelling alone, as you can identify the other lone cruisers.

So will other cruise lines take up the singles challenge? Realistically, no. NCL is not being altruistic by catering for singles; it just happens to have these Studios on Epic, which senior vice-president marketing Maria Miller admitted had sold mainly to single people anyway. "We are positioning them where the market is," she said.

Having said that, it only takes one cruise line to do something for the others to follow. Speciality restaurants, poolside screens, adult-only lounges, whizzy water slides, automatic gratuities. They all started somewhere.

Now we just need one of the big cruise lines to actually have the courage to break away from the pack and do something about tipping, not just say they are "looking" at it.

Or is that just being too unrealistic?

Cruising and bridge go together like hearts and diamonds, so it's no surprise to see that Fred Olsen has teamed up with the English Bridge Union to offer a debut EBU-sanctioned tournament at sea.

It takes place on Balmoral's 12-night Canary Islands cruise from Dover on May 3 and will be hosted by Daily Express bridge correspondent Paul Hackett and keen player, who will be giving talks and daily play updates during the cruise.

During the six days at sea - and probably during port days if I know anything about bridge players - there will be tournaments for experienced and novice players. They will earn EBU points for taking part.

These special-interest cruises are great for single people - for bridge players it's a perfect way to make friends - but I see this is also a cruise-and-walk voyage in association with Ramblers, so it will work well if any non-playing spouses fancy going along as they'll have something to do while their partners are up to their tricks.

The cruise will be visiting Madeira, La Palma, Tenerife, Gran Canaria and Lisbon before returning to Dover.

Prices start from £1,004 per person, plus it costs an extra £100 per player to take part in the bridge sessions (which must be pre-booked through Fred Olsen). Your travel agent will have more details, or call Fred on 01473 742424 to find out more.