Community first, travel second

August 17, 2022 World iGaming & Gambling

What are the trends for solo female travel in 2022?
Solo female travel is a fast-growing segment. It was already growing exponentially before the pandemic and has recovered quickly. A quick check on Google trends shows that search volumes for “solo female travel” are already higher than pre-pandemic levels.

The biggest trend we see in solo female travel is the explosion in interest. Our community has been growing at a very fast pace – exceeding our expectations – since the beginning of the pandemic. We see the awareness surrounding this travel style increasing and bringing waves of women who are travelling for the first time.

We also see that many tour companies, such as Insight Vacations, Intrepid and Trafalgar, that have launched women-only tours. This is a massively growing segment. New companies, likewise, are emerging to cater to solo female travel, especially in the last year.

About a third of our members have never travelled solo before and join us to get encouragement and tips from more experienced solo travellers. This is what sets us apart from the others. Our community provides support, expert advice and a sense of belonging that may be lacking if you don’t know anyone in your circle of friends who travels on her own.

In many cases, in particular in the more conservative parts of Asia, women also need to fight stereotypes and social pressure to travel on their own. Realising that they are not alone and that hundreds of thousands of women travel solo every day is empowering in itself and bringing more women to the space to at least try.

Do you see more solo female travellers preferring tour groups or continuing with self-planned itineraries?
We see both. Many new solo travellers are opting for small group tours to reduce some of the uncertainty surrounding a first solo trip. Others have decided not to wait anymore for others and take that bucket list trip, be it solo or as part of a group.

Small group tours address a lot of the concerns of solo female travellers. They take the stress out of planning, provide a safe environment, bring like-minded women together, facilitate new friendships, and remove all the fears about feeling lonely, bored, lost or scared.

As most Asian travellers could only start to travel in the last few months due to Covid-19 restrictions, we are only just seeing the uptake recently. Among Asian countries, we see an increase in sign-ups from Australia, Singapore, Malaysia and India, probably because our tours are only conducted in English, therefore interests will come from majority English-speaking (markets).

For Solo Female Travelers, our members have to source for their own flight tickets. We will start and end our tours in a major city for easier pick-up, and they can stay a few days in these cities outside of our planned itinerary. We do not offer guided tours in these major cities because there is no added value for us in these places; travellers can already explore on their own.

Your website has a tool to identify safe destinations for your members. Tell us more about it.
To address the element of safety, we developed an in-house tool called the Solo Female Travelers Safety Index on our website where our members can rate and review the destinations according to how safe they felt while visiting.

The indicators or variables identified are: risk of theft, risk of scam, risk of harassment, and attitude towards women. Then, there are three other sources – the US and UK travel advisories plus the Global Peace Index. We then make an average of these findings.