Of course there can be a downside to the solo cruise experience, and it starts with pricing. Most cruise lines price every voyage on the basis of ‘two people sharing’ and that can really hike up the prices if you travel alone – in fact, you may end up paying the full double price for a cabin. You can, of course, choose to share a cabin, but it’s not to everybody’s taste to end up spending fourteen days or more with a stranger. Single cabins are rare birds on a cruise ship, and tend to get booked up very fast!

There are some general rules about the solo cruise experience – to get the best from your holiday, you have to get out and about. Don’t pick a favourite bar and stay in it for the whole cruise, as the rest of the world may be elsewhere – try a different place each lunchtime and evening and after three or four days you’ll have a good sense of who hangs out where on the ship and where you’re going to find the best company for you. Take organised excursions if you want to be sociable – you’ll meet people during the course of them that you might not meet otherwise. The cruise director can often help match you up with like-minded singles (and even couples and families – why not?) so that you find your feet socially whether you’re a sports fiend, a card-player or a sudoku fan.

Use facilities like our forum to find like-minded singles and see if you might take a cruise together, or ask people who’ve taken a cruise you’re interested in whether they felt a single traveller would have enjoyed the experience – first hand reports can be the best guide of all.

• Carnival Cruise Lines – There are probably more solo cruise travellers with Carnival than with any other line, and their cruise directors are usually brilliant about organising ways to bring singles together.
• Royal Caribbean International Cruises is often considered the best choice for active, young-minded couples and singles of all ages. They also run Carnival a close second in having a reasonable percentage of solo travellers on board.
• Holland America is the only cruise line left that has a roommate matching service. They will put singles together if each potential roommate agrees to such a set. Unfortunately, the only criteria they use to match roommates is gender! It used to be smoking preferences too, but that’s out of the window now. Of course this can save a fortune on the single supplement, but it’s a risk – you never know who you’ll be sharing with.
• Crystal and Silversea are luxury level cruise companies that tend to have more female solo holidaymakers on board than men – this is because they appeal to the older age group who, statistically, tend to be widows, (women live longer than men, it’s a fact!) and who provide gentlemen hosts who dance with the ladies and offer them other social support.

QE2 was voted the best cruise ship for singles aged 50 and up. Sadly, she’s not much longer to be with us and all final cruises are fully booked. The Queen Mary 2 doesn’t seem to have developed such a single-friendly vibe yet, but it’s early days.