Think that being a single parent means you have to limit your family vacation to amusement parks near home and short camping excursions? Not according to a recent survey by Single Parent Travel conducted in fall 2008, which queried more than 1,000 single parents about their vacation habits.
Last conducted more than 10 years ago, the new survey revealed some interesting results. About 65 percent of single parents prefer vacations lasting between five and seven days, and 80 percent desire to visit the Caribbean and Central America, beating out demand for U.S. destinations, even though 90 percent of respondents have ended up booking a domestic vacation. Nearly 92 percent of the respondents were women.
“In 1998, the Caribbean was exotic. Now we are seeing desire to go to Europe, Africa and South America. That was almost unheard of in the previous survey,” says John Frenaye, chief single dad of the site, who also is a TravelMuse contributor.
There’s also been a dramatic increase in income—70 percent earn more than $50,000 annually—and education levels—73 percent have a college or post-graduate degree—compared to 21 percent and 54 percent, respectively, from the 1998 survey.
Additional results include:
61 percent of those surveyed are divorced while 30 percent are single by choice.
59 percent have one child, 31 percent have two children.
30 percent earn between $50,000 and $75,000 annually.
55 percent prefer to book vacation packages and want resorts in vacation "hot spots."
vacations that centered around culture and history or national parks outranked theme park vacations.
nearly half say that their ideal length of travel to a destination is less than three hours.
16 percent spend roughly $2,000 annually on family vacations.
View the full results of the Single Parent Travel Survey, which included some entertaining “tongue-in-cheek” questions, so to speak (62 percent of respondents say that they can roll their tongue, but 90 percent cannot touch the tip of their nose with their tongue).
Frenaye believes that the results of the survey will help Single Parent Travel determine the destination, duration and cost of its future trip offerings. Frenaye recently took over the company, which was founded in 1983 by single mom Brenda Elwell and is dedicated to making single parent vacations with children easier by offering travel tips, organizing annual group trips and encouraging single parents to share their travel experiences on its Web site.
“I think the results will open some eyes to some of the destinations and trips that we can provide. It might get people dreaming and thinking about a trip down the road,” says Frenaye, adding that his favorite single-parent travel experiences were when each of his kids was in third grade.
“They got the opportunity to pick a destination with very little guidance from me. It is a one on one trip and the other two kids stayed with their mother. My son and I went to China, my middle daughter and I went to Spain, and my youngest and I went to Italy. They were all fantastic one-on-one time and some great memories in some great destinations.”
Read more about One-on-One family vacations and other Single Parent Travel articles.
