Unless you’ve had your head in the sand for a while you would have heard of the phenomenon known as speed dating. The concept is that lots of single people turn up to a bar or other venue and then each person has a mini-date with all the other people individually in a round robin style event. The dates often last no longer than 5 minutes and people are encouraged to ask lots of questions very quickly. The downside of this style of dating is that people are very rushed and often do act as they would when they were more relaxed. A new ‘dating cruise’ company think they can solve these problems.
Australian based company, ‘Love Works’ are now planning their second singles luxury cruises following the success of their first trip. For the time being you need to be a single person to get a ticket for the cruise and must have evidence to back up your occupation. “These are the only requirement of our holiday makers”, Mike Flemming of Love Works commented. “They have the whole trip to get to know the ins and outs of the other holiday makers, which is typically 4 week long enough to get know someone pretty well we think.” The original cruise was around the Indian Ocean and took place over 3 weeks, catering for more than 2500 singles. It was deemed very successful by the organizers who claimed that over 400 couple was made on the trip and around 25 of those are already planning marriage. They are planning to expand the cruises to local river cruises and one is already scheduled to take place in Germany next year on one of the Rhine river cruises
Flemming has commented that the success of the new dating cruises comes from the fact people are more relaxed on the boat as they treat it as a holiday and they also are not forced to act quickly when meeting people as there is plenty of time for everyone.