Why women are drawn to solo travel and how the tourism industry is responding

Geoff Bennett:

A majority of people traveling abroad alone these days are women, and demand for women-led tour groups is rising.

Stephanie Sy is back with a closer look at the reasons why women are drawn to solo travel and how the hospitality industry is taking notice.

Julia Roberts, Actress:

I want to go someplace where I can marvel at something.

Stephanie Sy:

Middle-aged woman liberated by divorce jets out to explore the world and find herself through travel.

Julia Roberts:

And I'm going to end the year in Bali.

Stephanie Sy:

Between 2010's "Eat, Pray, Love" and the 2014 film adaptation of the memoir "Wild"…

Reese Witherspoon, Actress:

What have I done?

Stephanie Sy:

… the solo female traveler has become a Hollywood trope. But it's not just in books and films. More and more women prefer to explore the world solo. A few years ago, then-23-year-old Molly Furey explored New Zealand alone.

Molly Furey, Traveler:

I got to go on an incredible boat ride through Milford Sound. I went whale watching in Kaikoura, once-in-a-lifetime kind of opportunity, went snowboarding in Queenstown. So there were a lot of things happening that I'm not doing in my day-to-day life here in Ireland.

Stephanie Sy:

Yes, she returned with great adventures under her belt, but,

Molly Furey:

I came back, and I felt like people were expecting me to have something interesting to say about it. I was kind of struck by the fact I didn't have some big epiphany or big transformation or self-discovery to share.

The things that actually mattered or that I actually learned from would never show up in a film.

Stephanie Sy:

She later wrote a piece for "Vogue" titled: "I Failed at Solo Female Travel," noting that what she learned on the trip was more mundane, how to shop, get gas, and navigate a foreign country on her own.

Barbara Winard, Traveler:

I was always afraid and sometimes panic-stricken when I first started out.

Stephanie Sy:

Barbara Winard did what Molly did in her 20s too, but at a time before solo female travel was as commonplace. Her first solo trip was to Europe in 1970.

Barbara Winard:

People would always ask me where my husband was. Wasn't I afraid of traveling alone? How did my husband allow me to travel? And I didn't have a husband at the time, so I would make something up.

Stephanie Sy:

Now 75 and married, she still takes solo trips, but with many female travelers doing the same, she's rarely alone.

Barbara Winard:

I may go places by myself, but I kind of have made a lot of friends who love to travel. So, I have alternatives now. When I first started traveling, no one wanted to go where I wanted to go or when I wanted to go, so I felt I had no choice.

Stephanie Sy:

One of the people Winard met in her travels was Patricia Patton. As a young Black Pan Am flight attendant in 1970, she was already a pioneer. World travel pushed the frontier even further.

Patricia Patton, Traveler:

Travel has been really helpful in supporting me and my desire to live into the fullness of who I am, to push into those margins and my boundaries.

Stephanie Sy:

She says its become more and more socially acceptable for older women, married, divorced or otherwise, to travel solo.

Patricia Patton:

Because so many of our mates have made other choices besides accompanying us on something that maybe we want to do, I think that women feel that they can relax, they can create the kind of memories that they want, traveling solo, and that not disrupt the relationship, because that's an antiquated idea anyway.

Stephanie Sy:

And technology has only made solo travel easier, says University of Florida tourism Professor Heather Gibson, who began researching solo women travel in 1998.

Heather Gibson, University of Florida: When we first started our solo women research back in the late 1990s, there wasn't a mobile phone. And so one of the things that many of the women spoke to us about was fleeting loneliness, for example, or needing to find a way to share their experiences back home.

Stephanie Sy:

Smart mobile phones mean not only communications, but maps, GPS, booking accommodations are all at ones fingertips, and social media, of course.

The solo female travel influencer has also become travel agent and tour guide, as in the case of Nabila Ismail. She's been to 63 countries, many of them alone. In 2022, she set off with the Dose of Travel Club, planning group trips for mostly women of color travelers. Their last major trip was to Iraq.

Nabila Ismail, Dose of Travel Club: My idea is to go explore places that we have either heard about in a negative limelight in the media or while growing up, and just countries that people kind of don't even have on their radar.

Stephanie Sy:

The 29-year-old content creator also uses social media to exchange travel advice with her over 100,000 followers.

Nabila Ismail:

It's helped me make my friends while traveling and it's made solo travel that much more enjoyable. It also kind of fuels my travel addiction. There's always something new being added to my bucket list, based on what I'm seeing online.

Stephanie Sy:

There's a growing market catering to solo female travelers like Ismail and her followers, companies like Air India introducing rows reserved for solo women travelers, Trafalgar introducing a women-only set of tours, or luxury hotel chains offering solo packages, in addition to honeymoons or rather, "oney-moons."

And post-pandemic, some travel companies reported that 85 percent of their solo travelers are women.

Patricia Patton:

I don't know if you have ever walked past a mirror and seen your reflection and not recognized yourself, but, often, travel will give you that experience as well.

Stephanie Sy:

For Patricia Patton, years of solo travel have helped form her identity.

Patricia Patton:

When I initially started to travel, I realized that not everybody lived the same and that I could decide, I personally could decide how I wanted to live.

Stephanie Sy:

But whether for adventure, well-being, or "Eat, Pray, Love"-style epiphanies, it's clear women are more empowered than ever to travel solo.

For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Stephanie Sy.