Are you a woman who’s interested in traveling alone – but were intimidated, confused, or just didn’t know where to start? Well, good news: solo female travel just got a heck of a lot easier.
*Note: this is a sponsored post, but I stand behind everything in it.
One of the biggest ovary-busters about being a broad abroad is that much of the information you need about safety is confined to female-centric corners of the internet. This perpetuates two things: the annoying need to go use a plethora of resources to research and book, and the continuing perception, in some corners at least, that women’s concerns are marginal.
In reality, solo female travel is on the rise – tour companies are reporting big increases in solo females booking. Women control 80% of travel decisions, and 15 trillion dollars in spending power. This is not a marginal space.
Related: Solo Travel: Find Your Inner Badass
So I was psyched to see Trip.com announce the addition of its 20th tribe: Solo Female Travel, along with a woman-to-woman safety tips feature in 44 countries – to start. This fills a void in mainstream products for woman-to-woman travel resources – informing and empowering women to safely and enjoyably check destinations off of their personal travel bucket list, and you can book everything from flights to hotels on site.
When it comes down to it, the question is not whether women are going to travel, it’s how. Trip.com’s data shows that that despite safety warnings and concerns, solo female travelers in some cases are going in increasing numbers to the countries which also make up the list of Least Safe Countries (I have been to two out of four).
- Jamaica (ranked third on least safe list) is up 64.2%
- Colombia (ranked seventh) is up 52.6%
- Egypt (ranked first) is up 51.6%
- Ecuador (ranked eighth) is up 37.5%
Related: The Ultimate List of Solo Female Travel Safety Tips
“Believing that the word is a scary place where people mean us harm has a tendency to limit not only our actions, but our thinking as well. It might feel overwhelming at first, but allow yourself to be filled with wonder and excitement. You can think through the practicalities and scale back later, but for now just dream,” notes Linda Talarico, digital nomad, yoga teacher, wellness coach, intrepid solo traveler and long-time Tripster Pro, in a Trip.com blog post on encouraging women to pursue their dreams to travel.
Interested in adding your voice? Trip.com will continue to add data and tips over the next months. Contribute your tips via this survey (and be entered to win one of 3 $100 Amazon gift certificates).
And, just because I like numbers (and you should too), here are some fun stats from Trip.com:
Top 10 places where women should use caution:
… it should be noted that this list is of popular countries to travel to as, let’s be honest, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc would rank pretty high if included.
- Egypt
- Morocco
- Jamaica
- India
- Peru
- The Bahamas
- Colombia
- Ecuador
- Turkey
- Guatemala
Related: 10 Reasons Why You Should Go to Egypt RIGHT NOW
Top ten destinations for solo female travelers:
- Tuscany
- Maui
- Yellowstone National Park
- Machu Picchu
- Yosemite National Park
- Jerusalem
- Grand Canyon
- Tulum
- Orlando & Walt Disney World
- Kyoto
Fastest growing destinations for solo female travelers:
- Singapore
- Washington, D.C.
- Dublin
- Lisbon
- Greater Los Angeles
- Greater Seattle
- Bangkok
- Sedona
- Amsterdam
- Vienna
For more information, visit https://www.trip.com/tribes/solo-female
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ABOUT TRIP.COM
Trip.com (formerly Gogobot)’s mission is to make having awesome experiences less work, and more fun. Its unique combination of predictive AI technology and personalization make finding and having great experiences, whether local or global, easier than ever. The app takes data like time of day, weather and more into account to create smart recommendations, both in the moment and ahead of time. Users can select the tribes (Family Travelers, Foodies, Luxury, Wellness and LGBT, among others) that best represent them to further personalize their experience. Tripsters can also book flights, hotels, restaurant reservations and tour tickets through the app and site – thanks to great integrations with some of the industry’s best partners.
More than 10 million people used Trip.com to plan and research places to go in the last year. Trip.com also has more than one million reviews, five million photos and postcards, plus 60,000 city guides available on both the site and its apps (Android, Apple Watch and iPhone). As a trusted partner, Trip.com powers content for top brands like HomeAway, Expedia, Hostelworld, Sabre and more.
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