As a resort owner I always want to hear what our guests like and dislike about our resort. This gives us a better understanding of our customers and allows us to constantly improve our resort and service.
I also regularly visit several website forums and read naturist magazines to see what is going on in the naturist community and it was here that I saw what seems to be one of the biggest issues within naturism “the single male ”.
I started researching into what the problem is and soon I saw a trend. It seems to me, that there is a few singles that go to the clubs, resort or beaches and make a general nuisance of themselves tarnishing the rest of the single males with a bad name.
We unfortunately became victim to the single male at a beach in the UK many years ago when a guy decided it would be OK to openly masturbate next to my wife while we were resting on the beach. This was one of Samantha’s first experiences of naturism and could quite easily have put her off for life.
I managed to talk Samantha into visiting a naturist resort with me and told her it was a managed resort so nobody would be misbehaving. As it was one of our first visits to a resort we thought that it would be just couples and families, but to our surprise there were a few single males on the site. They could not be any further away from the man on the beach. They were polite, chatty and never did we feel uncomfortable or harassed by any of them.
Once we opened our resort in Greece the single male issue raised its head again. Do we let singles in or not? We decided to offer our rooms out to a limited number of singles at any one time. This seemed to be the best and most comfortable solution for the other naturist guests. But question: how do we find the nice polite guys we met at the resort and avoid the perverts at the beach?
Well we have done quite well to date and have had a great number of really nice guys and girls who are single come to stay with us at Vassaliki. We have had a few bad eggs who got in but we removed them as soon as we were aware that they were there only to look and stare.
So how do we do it? We believe it is the first point of contact the guest makes to the resort. Most of the time it is by email, so be careful this can easily be misconstrued by the recipient.
What I suggest is calling the resort and speaking to the owners. We are very happy to discuss your holiday with you and discuss dates and accommodation requirements. Our policy is to allow singles on the resort as long as we still maintain a good gender balance of guests to give everyone a comfortable and pleasant naturist experience. If we cannot take your booking for the dates you give us we will let you know why and be happy to discuss alternative dates with you. Talking seems to be the last point of communication these days, but we feel this is the best way for us to find out if our resort is suitable for you. If you are genuine we will know straight away!! The perverts soon drop the guard and start asking inappropriate questions like “Are you naked right now”” being top of the list!!
Why am I writing this”? Well I feel the single guys seem to be discriminated against. So I decided to do an experiment. I was going to become a single male naturist and try and book a naturist holiday on my own. I wanted to see how I was treated and to look into how my company can offer a better service to this largely left out part of the naturist market.
I started by contacting five small resorts around Europe with an email stating I am a single guy who wants to book a weeks holiday at their resort. The responses were varied! Two resorts never even got back to me! This I think is rude and not good business practice. Even if you have a no singles policy you never know when this single naturist may get a naturist partner and you will have already lost their custom. One resort responded with a generic no as we have a no singles policy, I suppose we should be happy they made the effort to reply, but two resorts did offer me accommodation one for the dates I requested and the other offered alternative dates as they were full for my chosen dates.
So my conclusion is I think, that both parties can improve the situation, the resorts/clubs need to be much more open to this market and the genuine single naturists need to be more open to make conversation with the resorts and clubs. Sorry to say, but I think emails are a big no for this particular job.
And my last point is to the resorts and clubs, from experience single guests generally stay on resort and eat in your restaurant, drink in your bar and book your excursions… we all know what this means: “important income for your business!!” This all helps build a positive future for naturism and naturist facilities.
