Single Parents Need Vacations Too, and More Destinations Want Them to Visit

“We were seeing a lot of older cruises, but we wanted to reach a wider demographic,” he said. So far, they’ve had success: Mr. DaCosta said that about 575 single parents, along with their children, cruised with the line this past summer.

Find a travel agency that caters to single-parent travel

Dyan McKie, a Melbourne, Australia resident and the brand manager for family adventures at Intrepid Travel, said she and five-year-old her daughter, Beatrice feel out of place when they’re around two-couple families on their frequent travels together.

“Sometimes we want company for dinner or when we’re doing an activity, but I don’t want to force ourselves on anyone,” she said.

Motivated both by her own experiences and the increasing number of single parent families booking trips with her firm, Ms. McKie created six new tours specifically for solo parent families to Costa Rica, Thailand, Northern India, Egypt, Vietnam and Morocco.

The trips range in length from eight to 15 days, and have a starting price of between $555 to $3,185, airfare not included.

And Britain-based Virgin Holidays started a new single parent trip category last October that includes air-inclusive trips to 10 Caribbean resorts where parents don’t pay a single supplement and children get a discount. The tour operator initiated the change after numerous requests from customers, according to the company’s managing director, Joe Thompson. “Single parents were telling us that they needed affordable vacation options for their kids, and that’s what we’re trying to give them,” he said.