We have long felt that the status of ‘single’ cruisers on ships is a curious one. If you examine for instance most of the marketing material produced by the cruise lines then the single traveller might be said to be generally invisible, all the pictures in the brochures and the ads tending to feature, as they do, happy couples sharing loungers, drinks and meals. The same also applies to accommodation; on ships where there are single cabins, then these too are likely to be invisible, situated well out of the mainstream way. A single cabin with a balcony? Unheard of!

It’s odd, because of course cruises are a superb way for single people to see the world (unlike hotels, for instance they offer a fair guarantee of social interaction throughout the day) and one would have thought that the cruise lines would therefore be far more interested and innovative in developing this market.

It’s a state of affairs that we at Mundy are determined to change over time, and with that in mind we decided to hold some focus groups to enable us to learn more about the issues facing the single cruiser, and to help us develop products that will better meet their needs.

Fred. Olsen, one of the cruise lines that is more proactive than most in this area, were kind enough to offer to host the event, and so it was to Dover on a sunny February day that a couple of coachloads of Mundy respondents were bussed down to board Balmoral for focus groups and lunch.

My apologies if you have read this far in the expectation of finding out what we learnt from the groups, but Cruise News is (as we know and you might expect) read with avid interest by our competition and it would be commercial folly for us to reveal our findings before we have developed our thinking and products.

But one change we have already made. If you leaf to the back of the magazine (the bit with all those tempting offers) then single cruisers will find a section devoted specially to them. But don’t look for anything saying ‘For single cruisers’ – for another thing we learnt is that the very terminology ‘single’ is potentially disparaging, in that it can be seen as an unnecessary comment on marital status, (recalling the great Mrs/Miss/Ms. debate of the last millennium). So this is the last time you will read anything in Cruise News that talks of ‘single cruisers’ ; from now on we will refer to those who are travelling on their own as ‘Solo Cruisers’ , an expression which we think is both more accurate and also more pleasing to the ear.