What does double occupancy mean?

Contrary to what some believe, double occupancy means “two people per room“, not “two people per bed”.

A lot of folks don’t understand hotel jargon. I must admit, I can sometimes find it rather baffling myself. And the Internet doesn’t always reveal the truth.

When booking a stay at a hotel, especially when it’s multiple rooms or multiple nights, one wants to get the best deal they can. But not understanding hospitality industry lingo can set you back rather than save you precious $$; therefore it pays to understand some key terms. This can be true when booking a spot on a group tour, too, especially if you’d prefer not to share your room with someone you’ve never met.

When reviewing my website traffic, one of the terms I regularly see people inquiring about is double occupancy, which can be simply defined as two people per room. But the hotel industry has found reason to define it further. Essentially, double occupancy means that the room charge is the same whether one or two people stay in the room. Another industry term, single supplement, refers to an extra charge paid by solo travelers who request their own room.

The issue of double occupancy vs. single supplement is often one of privacy and cost. As a general rule, many of the rooms being booked on behalf of a tour group will feature two queen or double beds, depending on availability, with the exception of bed and breakfast inns, nearly all of which feature one bed per room. If there are two beds available per room and group travelers wish to have their own (single supplement) room, they can expect to pay substantially more for their tour. That’s generally the way it works in many, if not most, situations: you can expect to pay a little more to ensure more privacy. For some, it’s a matter of peace of mind: you won’t be risking your personal items and valuables to the prying eyes (or sticky fingers) of a stranger.

At California Wine Hikes, our tours encourage group dynamics, and we therefore typically book two people per room. Assuming there are two beds per room at our tours’ lodging sites, solo travelers will be paired with a roommate. Or, solo travelers can request their own room.

We have a feature for that, and we call it I prefer to have my own room. Clever, eh? Simply put, if you are booking one of our multi-day tours, are traveling solo, and wish to request your own room, you can do so directly from any of our web pages that showcase multi-day tours* by clicking the checkbox underneath i prefer to have my own room. The price you see next to this checkbox is specific to the tour you are viewing; this single supplement price will be added to the total package cost of the tour after you click the book now button to reserve your tour.

Clicking any of our book now links will automatically direct you to a secure shopping cart. If you are planning a tour with more than one person in mind, you’ll have the option to choose a quantity of tour packages in this shopping cart (for example, simply enter 2 to purchase a tour for two people). The total tour price will be computed for you automatically, including any single supplement charge per person that you may have added.

I invite my readers and potential guests to comment on this topic. Thanks!

~winehiker

*Use the search tours feature on any page of the californiawinehikes.com website to search by length of stay.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 29th, 2007 at 11:00 am and is filed under technical stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.