Glad you're not have...
Women are driving a boom in solo travel, shrugging off company and compromise to take transformative trips alone. Have you booked your ticket for one yet?
COMPILED BY: MEENA ALEXANDER
Answers on a postcard: what does your dream holiday look like? Do you picture yourself lolling on a white sand beach, a suncream-smudged Zadie Smith in hand and the surf tickling your toes? Maybe you’re more of an adventurer, hiking up hills and diving into crystalline waterfalls. Perhaps filling your days with art galleries and affogato in cobbled piazzas is all you really want.
Daydreaming about our next getaway never gets old, but one major thing has disappeared from our travel fantasies over the last three years: other people. Where once we might have felt uneasy about going it alone on our annual leave, today whisking yourself off is an aspirational act of independence, with the growing #solotravel community swapping tips and sunset snapshots that have inspired us all to chase our own Eat, Pray, Love experience.
“The appetite for solo travel has skyrocketed since 2020, with bookings for single rooms up significantly and Google searches quadrupling,” says Tim Hentschel, CEO of booking site HotelPlanner. It’s one of the industry’s fastest-growing markets and women are driving the boom, making up an estimated 84% of solo travellers. The rise, Hentschel believes, was born out of multiple lockdowns when we were forced to become comfortable with our own company. “We learnt how to manage our downtime on our own terms, putting our interests and ambitions first instead of fitting in with the schedules and desires of others,” he says. “I guess you could say the pandemic made us more selfish, but in a good way.”
With the world finally free of almost all restrictions and the narrative around solo travel shifting to one of empowerment and adventure, it’s set to be a solo summer: two thirds of women are hoping to travel alone according to a survey by tour company Intrepid Travel. More of us than ever want to carve out quality time with ourselves just as we would with friends, partners and family. “It’s a myth that all solo female travellers are single – many of our travellers are in a relationship but their partner has different interests when it comes to holidays,” says Zina Bencheikh, managing director EMEA at Intrepid. “Particularly post-pandemic, women want to see the world and they’re not letting anything hold them back.”
Solo trips are a shortcut to romanticising your life. When you’re alone, you are the main character by default. Your whims (‘ma
