This past spring, we held our second single parent travel survey. A big thanks to those who responded to the survey.

WHO YOU ARE
This year we had 788 respondents, the majority of whom are single parents (97%) and female (90%.) Eighty-one percent of respondents were the custodial parent to their children while 17% are sharing custody. Thirty- and forty-somethings abound, over 80% responded that they were in this age group.

KIDS, KIDS AND MORE KIDS!
The average number of children of our respondents was 1.5.
Children under 3 10%
Children aged 3 to 5 23%
Children aged 6 to 9 41%
Children aged 10 to 12 31%
Children aged 13- 17 25%
Children 18 and over 6%

INCOME AND TRIP SPENDING
As with the 2001 survey, this survey dispelled a misconception that single parents do not have enough disposable income to travel. The reality is that single parents exist at all income leavel. The distribution between the six categories (<$29k, $30k-$39k, $40k-$49k, $50-$59k, $60k-$75k and >75k%) ranged from between 16% to 19%.

Regardless of salary, the majority of respondents (61%) spend less than $2,500 on annual vacations. The next largest segment (26%) spends $2,501 to $3,999. However, single parents travel frequently taking and average of one to two week-long vacations a year and take two to three weekend trips per year.

From the comments, it was obvious to see that while the incomes of the single parent are higher than one would stereotypically expect, as a group you are receptive to bargains, particularly if the bargain targets the single parent family directly. Armed with these statistics and comments, we are writing to PR companies, hotels, airlines, ANY travel supplier to seek out travel bargains specifically that benefit the single parent. As you know, they are hard to come by. Our hope is that these statistics will encourage travel suppliers to CREATE some.

Most of you fly (67%) or drive (30%) to get to your destination on your annual vacation. From the comments, we could see many respondents take multiple methods of transportation, flying, driving, etc., depending on the trip type. The comments were filled with respondents interested in cruising, but very few responded to taking a cruise for their annual vacation. We suspect that might have to do with the single supplements in the cruise industry that penalize single parents.

Every single person responded that they like trips that were a mix of active and relaxing. Two-thirds of single parents like to vacation at a beach or a mountain resort and thirty percent liked to take a cruise, although many complained that cruises were too expensive or shared them with single supplements.

WHERE ARE YOU
We had quite a response from Canada with quite a few from Ontario. The UK was well represented with 14 respondents. We also had respondents from Norway, Australia, Puerto Rico and a few APSs. The five most represented states in order are New York, California, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. We got responses from as far away as Kihei, HI; Lexington, KY and Hayden, ID.

THANK YOU
Once again thank you to all of you who filled out the survey. We use this information to convince travel suppliers to address the needs of single parents who like to travel.

Click here for the first part of the survey results, the comments