Christopher Elliott’s column (“Hitting the road solo? Prepare to pay up”) at MSNBC.com today takes on my biggest pet peeve of the travel industry: Discrimination against solo travelers. Discrimination in any form steams me, but discriminating against people for having the courage to travel without a companion is just so ridiculous, I don’t even know where to begin.

It’s hard enough to swallow having to pay twice as much as people traveling as part of a couple, but I understand that, for instance, the cost of a room is the cost of a room, no matter how many people are in it. (Though why there aren’t rooms specifically designed for solos escapes me…) But there are stories in Elliott’s column about travel companies doubling a solo’s costs and then adding another penalty fee on top of that because they are traveling alone! I don’t know about you, but I am outraged by that. There is NO GOOD REASON for making a solo pay more than twice what someone traveling as part of a couple would pay. Think about it–one person is going to use fewer resources than a couple. Less water, less food, less heat, less electricity, taking up only one seat on a tour bus. They are actually SAVING a travel company or lodging establishment money, and yet they are being penalized anyway. Shannon Kovack’s story in particular was so egregious, I would have sued that travel company, even if I had to go broke to do it. It’s the principle of the thing. Aren’t there laws against things like this? And if there aren’t, there should be!

These travel companies are, in essence, saying “We don’t want your business, but if we have to take you, we’re going to take you for a ride.” They seem to be completely oblivious to the fact that many millions of people are traveling alone these days, with more joining that number every day.

Sometimes I think the only solution to this problem is for solo travelers to create an association to leverage our numbers to ensure fair treatment of solo travelers. What do you think? Would a solo travelers association help? If solos banded together (with our numbers being in the millions), using the power of the Internet, to boycott companies that rip off solo travelers, give negative publicity to the worst offenders, and only spend our money on hotels, motels, restaurants, cruise lines and tour companies that treat us well, don’t you think that would impact companies’ bottom lines and create a sea change in the way solo travelers are treated by the travel industry overall?