Dream Destinations Travel

1. Why Women Are Leading This Movement.
2. The Moment Everything Changes.
3. Age Is Not a Factor.
4. Heritage and Culture: Travel That Is Deeply Yours.
5. For the First-Timer: Where to Go, and How to Go Safely
6. Solo but Not Alone. A Tour Guide Will Make All the Difference.
7. Featured Specialist  ·  Southern & East Africa
8. Featured Specialist  ·  Oaxaca, Mexico
9. The Trip Is Waiting.

There is a specific family travel dynamic I know intimately: the car has barely left the driveway and someone is already arguing about which route to take. My family did this with great enthusiasm and zero resolution. This was the beginning of my journey to become a travel advisor. I decided that if someone was going to sort where everyone was going and in what order, it might as well be me, and I might as well get paid for it.

A confession about multigenerational travel.

I plan family trips for a living, including the spectacular chaos of multigenerational travel where grandparents want the museum, teenagers want the beach, parents want a nap, and nobody can agree on where to eat dinner. This is my superpower. Thanks to my own family travel experiences, I have learned to create separate excursions for each generation, carefully sequenced so everyone is delighted and nobody has to compromise on the things that matter most to them. Then I book my own solo trip. I love families. I also love leaving them at the airport.

I did not decide to become a solo traveler, I think I was driven to it. Literally. Growing up, my family traveled together, which I loved, and also argued regularly about where to go next. Every road trip had a committee. Every itinerary was a negotiation. Someone always wanted to stop at something nobody else cared about. Someone was ready to leave three minutes after arriving at the thing we had all agreed was the entire point of the trip. It was wonderful. It was also, for a child with very strong opinions about what she wanted to see and a complete inability to slow her roll for anyone, absolutely maddening.

I am only partially joking. The multigenerational family travel chaos of my childhood gave me two things: an absolute obsession with good trip planning, and an early and deeply personal understanding of why sometimes the best travel decision you can make is to go alone.

Why Women Are Leading This Movement.

“Traveling alone is not a consolation prize. For many travelers, it is the whole point.”

For many women, solo travel may be less about the destination and more about them. It’s a way to enjoy independence, navigate life transitions, build confidence, and experience the world on their own terms. Searches for solo female travel have increased fivefold since pre-pandemic levels. According to stats from several booking platforms, more than 50% of American women have already taken at least one solo trip, the highest rate of any country in the world.

Driven by increased financial independence and a cultural shift toward delayed marriage, women are no longer waiting for companions to see the world, they are instead leveraging digital communities for safety and connection as they embrace solo travel. I see this in my solo travel Facebook groups (with literally ten’s of thousands of members worldwide), all the time. They ask questions about safe destinations, restaurants and reliable tour companies and I always wonder why they don’t ask a travel advisor!

What is driving this is also not wanderlust alone. It is wellness. The growing understanding that real travel, the kind where you are fully present because there is no one to negotiate with over dinner reservations, is one of the most powerful tools for mental and emotional restoration available to us. The solo traveler going to a wellness retreat or a slow week in Portugal is not running away from her life. She is returning to herself. The distinction matters enormously.

She is also, paradoxically, going to meet more people. When you are alone, you are approachable. You talk to strangers, you take the table next to someone interesting at dinner and you often end up in conversations that would never have happened if you had arrived in a pair.

The Moment Everything Changes.

There is a moment that nearly every solo traveler describes, regardless of whether they are 28 or 68 when it happens. It is the moment, usually somewhere in the first 48 hours of a trip, when the low-grade anxiety of being alone somewhere unfamiliar tips over into something else entirely. Freedom. Presence. The particular electricity of knowing that every decision, every direction, every meal and every conversation belongs entirely to you.

What started as “I’ll just go alone” becomes, for most people who try it, the best decision they ever made for themselves. They feel confidence that did not exist before and experience healing that could not have happened in company. Friendships are built at safari camp dinners or over a glass of wine at a bar where you sat next to someone interesting, because there was no one with you to pull you elsewhere.

Age Is Not a Factor.

One of my favorite clients celebrated her 80th birthday on safari in Africa. She did not have a travel companion but she did have a clear vision of how she wanted to mark that particular revolution around the sun, and the absolute refusal to let logistics stop her. We planned every detail together, and she came back transformed in the specific way that Africa transforms people, which is thoroughly and permanently.

Then there is one of my male solo clients, also in his 80s, who has been quietly collecting solo trips for years. Mexico most recently. He is not making a statement about aging or independence. He is simply a person who loves to travel and who has found that going alone lets him move at exactly the pace and in exactly the direction that interests him most.

I share these two because the cultural image of the solo traveler still skews young and female, and that image leaves a lot of people out. Solo travel is for anyone who wants it. The desire to see the world on your own terms does not expire.

Heritage and Culture: Travel That Is Deeply Yours.

Some of the most powerful solo travel I know of is heritage travel. The kind where you are not just sightseeing but returning to something. A family homeland or a chapter of history that belongs to you personally. A place that has weight before you even arrive.

I have been to Auschwitz. I went alone, and I am profoundly glad I did. I went alone because what I knew, before I even boarded the plane, was that this was not a trip I could share. Not that day and not in that place. There are things that need to move through you in silence, without having to manage anyone else’s grief alongside your own. Auschwitz was one of them.

Eastern Europe, Morocco, Spain, Portugal, Israel: these are destinations where history is not a backdrop but the whole story. The Jewish quarters of Krakow and Budapest, the ancient mellahs of Fez and Marrakech, the Sephardic history threaded through the streets of Toledo and Lisbon, the extraordinary layered complexity of Jerusalem: these places reward solo travelers in ways that are genuinely difficult to replicate in a group. You can linger and be quiet to feel what you feel without managing anyone else’s experience alongside your own.

Culinary travel belongs in this conversation too. For instance Oaxaca. This is one of Mexico’s great food cities, with mole and mezcal traditions you can spend a week tracing through markets and family-run kitchens, and a walkable historic centro that makes it one of the safest and most rewarding places in the country to explore entirely on your own. Oaxaca is also considered one of the safest cities in Mexico for solo travelers.

True culinary discovery is in my opinion a solitary pursuit, whether you are eating your way through San Sebastian, tucked away at a Tokyo counter, or tracing local flavors through a Marrakech market. A trip’s finest meals often happen in solitude, when your attention is absolute, your itinerary is entirely your own, and your only focus is the world on your plate.

For the First-Timer: Where to Go, and How to Go Safely

Safety concerns are real and they deserve real answers. The good news is that the world’s safest solo travel destinations are genuinely extraordinary places.

Iceland leads every ranking for a reason: virtually no violent crime, strong gender equality culture, and infrastructure built for independent exploration. Japan is flawless in a way that makes solo travel feel not just safe but deeply comfortable. Solo dining there is practically a national art form. Portugal is warm, walkable, and affordable and New Zealand rewards solo travelers with spectacular natural environment and an ease of independent movement that is difficult to match. Nordic countries broadly offer safety and openness that are deeply embedded in the culture.

For something transformational: I would choose an African Safari. They are by design, a solo-but-not-alone experience. The days are guided, the game drives are quite social, and the camps create community naturally around a nightly campfire and dinner which you can join, or enjoy alone.

Against the backdrop of the continent’s vast landscapes, solo travelers find a unique blend of profound introspection during the day and shared awe in the evening. You arrive alone and you leave with people and moments you will remember for the rest of your life.

Solo but Not Alone. A Tour Guide Will Make All the Difference.

One of the most important things I do for first-time solo travelers is find them the right structure. A small group departure with an operator who attracts like-minded independent travelers. A wellness retreat where the programming naturally creates connection. A safari where the guide anchors every day. You do not have to choose between going alone and having support if you need it. The best solo travel experiences often include both, by design.

This is also where working with a travel advisor changes everything. I know which neighborhoods work for solo women at night, which properties have genuine 24-hour service, which tour operators have strong solo travel track records, and how to build an itinerary where the logistics never put you in an uncertain position without a clear path forward. The research and the worry that solo travelers often carry alone, I absorb, so you can just go.

“The world does not become less extraordinary when you see it alone. In many ways, it becomes more so.”

I cannot say this enough: a good local guide is one of the most valuable things a solo traveler can have. Not just for directions or translation, but for the kind of on-the-ground knowledge that keeps you safe and makes a place open up in ways it never would on your own. A great guide knows which streets feel different after dark, which markets are worth the detour, and how to read a room or a situation before you have to. The right guide does not make a destination feel smaller or more managed. They make it feel more yours. Below are two specialists that I would recommend any day and all day from personal experience.

Featured Specialist  ·  Southern & East Africa

Ruby Travel Solutions & WunderWay Tours. Book directly: +27 76 813 9204 Email: info@rubytravel.co.za

What Guests Are Saying:

• “Attention to detail, reliability, foresight, unique experiences. Above all, seven-star service.” Vanessa, Europe
• “Professional, passionate, knowledgeable, and down to earth. Delivers and knows her stuff.” Taryn, UK
• “Our trip was perfect in every way. We were met at all airports promptly, we had wonderful guides, and the hotels and tents were fabulous. It was truly a trip of a lifetime for everyone.” Trevor, UK
• I have sent solo clients to Sandra and her team with complete confidence, including a guest who traveled to Victoria Falls and Botswana entirely on her own as a retirement milestone and still messages Sandra about Africa years later. That is what excellent service looks like in practice.

Featured Specialist  ·  Oaxaca, Mexico

Local guiding specialists  ·  oaxacaexperiencetours.com Book directly: +52 951 185 2471 WhatsApp

Omar Rito, who leads the team at Oaxaca Experience Tours, is personally responsive and genuinely easy to work with, whether you book through an advisor or reach out directly. He and his guides specialize in giving travelers real depth on the topics that interest them most, culture, history, food, or craft, anywhere in Mexico.

The Trip Is Waiting.

Whether you have been traveling solo for decades or you are considering your first trip, the conversation starts the same way: what do you want from this experience. Not just the destination, but how you want to feel when you get there and when you return. Restored. Moved. Fed, in every sense of the word.

I have planned safaris for solo women in their 80s, river cruises for solo men who wanted to see Europe at their own pace, heritage trips for travelers who needed to stand somewhere important entirely alone, and wellness retreats for women who needed days or weeks of belonging entirely to themselves. Every single one of those trips was worth it. Every single one of those clients came back changed in some important way. Your trip is waiting. Let’s make it happen.

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