Solo Travel for Beginners: How to Plan Your First Trip Alone (And Actually Love It)

Solo travel tips for beginners all say the same thing: it’ll change your life. What they don’t prepare you for is the feeling of sitting in an airport gate — boarding pass in hand, nobody next to me — wondering if I’d made a terrible mistake.

No one to split the cab with or watch my bag while I grabbed coffee. No one to turn to and say wait, is this the right terminal? Just me, my overpacked carry-on, and a mounting suspicion that every other solo traveler in history had been lying about how liberating this was supposed to feel.

And then the trip actually started. And everything changed.

If you’ve been thinking about taking a trip alone — for the first time, or the fifth time, or just to finally stop waiting for someone else’s schedule to align with yours — this guide is for you. Because solo travel in 2026 isn’t a niche pursuit for fearless adventurers anymore. It’s one of the fastest-growing travel movements in the world.

Search interest in “solo travel” hit an all-time high this year, and “women solo travel” reached a 15-year high. Skyscanner’s “solo” filter jumped 83% globally year-on-year, and Hilton reports that more than one in four travelers plan to travel alone in 2026. The global solo travel market — valued at over $549 billion in 2025 — is projected to more than double by 2033. Protect + 2

This isn’t a trend. It’s a shift.

And whether you’re drawn to it for the freedom, the self-discovery, the fact that you get to eat wherever you want for once — here’s everything you need to know to do it well.

Why Solo Travel Is Booming Right Now

Something shifted.

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when solo travel stopped being the thing people apologized for — oh, I couldn’t find anyone to come with me — and started being the thing people planned on purpose. But somewhere between a global pandemic that forced everyone to spend more time alone and a cultural moment where self-discovery became something to aspire to rather than explain away, it happened.

And the numbers in 2026 make it undeniable.

Skyscanner’s “solo” filter jumped 83% globally year-on-year. Search interest in “solo travel” hit an all-time high, and “women solo travel” reached a 15-year high. More than one in four travelers — 26% — plan to travel alone in 2026, and 48% are adding solo days onto otherwise group or family trips just to carve out time for themselves. The global solo travel market, valued at over $549 billion in 2025, is projected to more than double by 2033. Internationalinvestment + 3

That isn’t a niche. That’s a movement.

So why does 2026 feel different?

best solo travel destinations — Fuji mountain and cherry blossoms in spring, Japan.

Part of it is practical. AI trip planning tools have quietly removed one of the biggest barriers to going alone — the overwhelming logistics of figuring it all out by yourself. Building a two-week Japan itinerary used to mean hours of research, cross-referencing guidebooks, and hoping you hadn’t missed something obvious. Now it takes a conversation. The planning gap between “I want to go” and “I know how to go” has never been smaller.

Part of it is social. Solo travel has been normalized on social media in a way that simply wasn’t true five years ago. The solo dinner table photo, the solo hike summit shot, the “third day in Lisbon and I never want to leave” caption — these aren’t sad anymore. They’re aspirational. Millions of people have watched other people do it, decide it looked good, and started planning their own version.

And part of it is something harder to quantify. The pandemic gave a lot of people an involuntary education in their own company. Some people discovered they actually liked it. The idea of a trip that moves at your pace, eats what you want, stays as long as you feel like staying — that started sounding less like a consolation prize and more like the whole point.

Who’s actually doing it?

The image of the solo traveler as a twenty-something with a Eurail pass and a hostel bed is increasingly out of date. 39% of solo travelers in 2026 are aged 40 and over — the fastest-growing segment of the market. Women account for 84% of all solo travelers globally — a statistic that reframes the entire conversation about who this type of travel is “for.” And a growing cohort of bleisure travelers — people extending business trips by a few solo days on either end — are discovering solo travel almost by accident and coming back for more intentionally. Travel Tomorrow Hertz Iceland

When solo travelers are asked what they’re hoping to get out of a trip, the most common answer by far is simple: they just want to see the world. Nearly 75% selected this as their primary motivation. Not Instagram content. Not a personality overhaul. Just the world, on their own terms, at their own pace. wonderingescapes

That’s the thing about solo travel that no one really warns you about. You go thinking it’s about the destination. You come back knowing it was about something else entirely.

Best Destinations for First-Time Solo Travelers

Choosing your first solo destination matters more than people realize. Go somewhere with strong tourism infrastructure, reliable transit, and a culture that’s generally welcoming to independent travelers and your first solo trip will likely ruin you — in the best possible way. Go somewhere that requires navigating complex logistics, language barriers, or safety concerns before you’ve built any solo travel confidence and you’ll have a harder time.

The destinations below are picked specifically for first-timers: safe, navigable, solo-traveler-friendly, and genuinely worth the trip.

🌍 International Picks

🇯🇵 1. Japan

Japan is, by nearly every metric, the perfect first solo trip. With nearly 28,000 annual Google searches for “Japan solo travel,” it’s the most searched solo destination for Americans — and for good reason. It consistently ranks among the safest countries in the world, offering peace of mind that’s genuinely hard to find elsewhere.

The infrastructure alone makes solo travel here feel almost effortless. The train system is one of the best on earth — punctual, clean, and surprisingly intuitive once you have a IC card sorted. Google Maps works flawlessly for navigation. English signage is widespread in major cities. And the cultural norm of respectful, non-intrusive interaction means you can move through Tokyo, Kyoto, or Osaka at your own pace without the constant unsolicited attention that can wear solo travelers down in other countries.

Japan consistently ranks among the safest countries for first-time solo travelers, offering reliable public transportation, welcoming locals, and established systems to help travelers who need assistance. Go Car Rental Iceland

Where to base yourself: Tokyo for city energy and sheer overwhelming abundance of things to do; Kyoto for temples, bamboo forests, and a slower pace; Osaka for food, nightlife, and the friendliest locals in the country. A two-week trip that moves between all three — with a day in Hiroshima and a night in a traditional ryokan thrown in — is about as close to a perfect first solo trip as it gets.

🇮🇪 2. Dublin, Ireland

how to travel alone first time — Temple Bar Dublin

Dublin was ranked the top solo travel city in the world for 2026 by TripAdvisor’s Travellers’ Choice Best of the Best Awards — and if you’ve ever spent a night in an Irish pub talking to strangers who feel like friends by last call, you already understand why.

Dublin’s secret for solo travelers isn’t its museums or its Georgian architecture or even its surprisingly excellent food scene (though all of those are real). It’s the culture. Irish people are genuinely, effortlessly sociable in a way that makes being alone in Dublin feel almost impossible to sustain. You will talk to people. They will talk to you. By day three you’ll have three invitations and a local’s pub recommendation list that no guidebook contains.

Ireland ranks in the Tier 1 “Elite” category for solo female travelers in 2026 — among the safest and most frictionless destinations in the world for women traveling alone. Go Campers

The city is compact and walkable, the public transit is reliable, and day trips to the Cliffs of Moher, Howth, and the Wicklow Mountains are all easy to do independently. Fly in, drop your bag, and just start walking. Dublin will take it from there.

🇵🇹 3. Portugal (Lisbon & Porto)

Portugal has spent the last few years quietly becoming one of the most beloved solo travel destinations in Europe — and in 2026 it’s fully arrived. It’s one of Europe’s safest and most affordable countries, with walkable cities, reliable public transport, and locals who are genuinely friendly toward independent travelers. The Travel Trio

Lisbon rewards slow exploration. The seven hills, the tram lines, the miradouros at sunset with a glass of wine and nowhere to be — it’s a city built for wandering without an agenda. Café culture here means women sitting alone for hours are completely unremarkable, and street harassment is minimal. Porto, two hours north by train, is smaller and arguably more beautiful — steep riverfront streets, port wine cellars, some of the best tile work in Europe. Hertz Iceland

Budget solo travelers can get by on $45–70 per day covering accommodation, food, and transport — which, for Western Europe, borders on extraordinary value. Add English being widely spoken across both cities and you have an international solo trip that genuinely feels manageable from day one. The Travel Trio

🇹🇭 4. Thailand

Thailand has been a solo travel rite of passage for decades — and the reason it keeps appearing on every list isn’t inertia, it’s because it actually delivers.

This country tops the list for first-time solo travelers thanks to efficient public transport, affordable stays, and clear tourist routes. The solo traveler infrastructure here is mature in a way few destinations can match: hostels with social programming built in, well-worn routes between cities and islands that make it easy to move around without overthinking logistics, and a community of other independent travelers at virtually every stop that makes meeting people almost inevitable. Travel Tourister

Budget travelers can cover accommodation, food, and activities for $30–40 per day — making Thailand one of the most accessible international solo trips for anyone watching their spending. Chiang Mai for culture and cooking classes, Bangkok for the overwhelming, wonderful chaos of it, Krabi or Koh Lanta for the islands: three weeks barely scratches it. The Travel Trio

One honest note: scams exist, particularly in Bangkok, but awareness and basic street smarts handle most of them. Read up before you go, trust your gut, and don’t follow anyone who approaches you outside a major temple. Never Ending Footsteps

🇨🇷 5. Costa Rica

Costa Rica occupies a particular niche in the solo travel landscape: nature-first, deeply infrastructure-friendly, and welcoming enough that first-timers consistently describe it as one of the easiest trips they’ve ever taken alone.

The tourist routes are well-established without feeling like a conveyor belt. The shuttle system connecting major destinations — La Fortuna, Monteverde, Manuel Antonio, the Osa Peninsula — means you can move around the country without renting a car or navigating complex bus networks. Hostels and boutique guesthouses are well-distributed and largely excellent. And the outdoor activity culture — zip-lining, white water rafting, volcano hikes, wildlife tours — creates natural social situations where meeting other travelers happens organically.

Safety is solid by regional standards, the US dollar is widely accepted, and English is spoken in most tourist-facing businesses. For a first international solo trip that prioritizes nature, adventure, and a genuine sense of accomplishment, Costa Rica consistently overdelivers.

🇺🇸 Domestic Picks

🎸 6. Nashville, TN

This is one of those cities that seems almost engineered for solo travelers, even if that was never the intention. Broadway’s honky-tonks are free to enter, effortless to drift between, and filled with strangers who are already talking to each other. The food scene is serious enough to justify solo dinner reservations at the bar. The neighborhoods — 12South, East Nashville, The Gulch — are distinct enough to give each day a different energy.

It’s a city where being alone never feels lonely, largely because everyone’s out and everyone’s open. Book a guided walk through the neighborhoods, take a day trip to the Natchez Trace Parkway, or just follow the music. Nashville handles the social heavy lifting so you don’t have to.

🌲 7. Portland, OR

Portland has an independent traveler culture baked so deeply into its identity that solo travel here doesn’t just feel accepted — it feels native. The food cart pods are perfect for solo eating: grab whatever looks good, find a picnic table, and strike up a conversation with whoever’s sitting nearby. Powell’s Books could occupy an entire solo afternoon without apology. The neighborhoods reward wandering without an agenda.

Mild summer weather, excellent public transit, and easy access to Mount Hood and the Columbia River Gorge within an hour means Portland functions equally well as a city break and as an outdoor adventure base. It’s the kind of place solo travelers often extend by a day or two without fully meaning to.

🗽 8. New York City

New York City is the ultimate argument that being alone and being lonely are completely different things. The city is enormous, inexhaustible, and paradoxically one of the easiest places in the world to be by yourself — because every museum, every market, every park bench is already full of other people doing exactly the same thing.

Solo in New York means the Met on a Tuesday morning before the crowds arrive. It means a counter seat at a great ramen spot without a reservation. It means wandering Brooklyn for an entire afternoon with no plan and somehow ending up somewhere perfect. The city rewards aimlessness in a way that almost no other place does — and unlike most destinations, you genuinely cannot run out of things to do.

Stay in a neighborhood rather than Midtown if you can: the West Village, Williamsburg, or Astoria give you a more human-scaled version of the city without sacrificing access to anything.

🌵 9. Sedona, AZ

Sedona is a different kind of solo trip — less about meeting people, more about meeting yourself. The red rock landscape is genuinely otherworldly, the hiking is accessible across a wide range of fitness levels, and the town has built an entire industry around wellness, retreats, and the kind of deliberate solitude that people increasingly travel specifically to find.

The number one motivation for leisure travel in 2026 is “to rest and recharge,” cited by 56% of travelers — followed by time in nature at 37% and improving mental health at 36%. Sedona delivers on all three simultaneously. Vortex hikes, sound baths, spa days, and sunsets over Cathedral Rock from the Airport Mesa overlook — it’s a solo trip built less around sightseeing and more around arriving home feeling like a different, better-rested version of yourself.

Drive in from Phoenix (about two hours), stay at least three nights, and leave your itinerary intentionally loose. Sedona works best when you let it.

Solo Travel Safety Tips That Actually Work

Let’s be honest about something first: the question “is solo travel safe?” doesn’t have a single answer, because it depends enormously on where you’re going, how you prepare, and what your baseline awareness looks like on the ground. 59% of women and 90% of men report feeling safe traveling alone — but one in four solo female travelers say they felt unsafe at least once in the past year.

That gap isn’t a reason to stay home. It’s a reason to prepare well.

The good news is that most solo travel safety comes down to a handful of consistent habits — not luck, not fearlessness, not years of experience. Here’s what actually works.

🔍 Before You Go: Research Is Your First Layer of Safety

The travelers who feel most confident on solo trips aren’t the boldest ones. They’re the most prepared ones.

Before you book anything, spend time understanding your destination beyond the highlights reel. Look up which neighborhoods are safest to stay in, what the most common scams targeting tourists look like, and what the cultural norms are around women traveling alone. A quick search for “[destination] solo travel tips” in Reddit’s r/solotravel or r/femaletravel will give you more practical, current information than most guidebooks.

The countries and cities that score highest for solo female travelers share certain characteristics: reliable public transport running late into the night, accommodation where single female guests are normal rather than unusual, low rates of street harassment, and clear norms around women’s independence in public spaces. These factors matter more to daily safety than crime statistics in isolation.

Knowing this before you go means you can choose your destination, your neighborhood, and your accommodation with your eyes open.

📍 Share Your Itinerary — Every Time

This one is non-negotiable and takes about five minutes.

Before every trip, send someone at home a copy of your itinerary: your flight details, accommodation names and addresses, and a rough day-by-day plan. Set up a regular check-in system — even a daily “I’m fine” text is enough. Schedule a nightly check-in call or text with family or friends. Even a quick message can be vital if something goes wrong.

It’s not dramatic. It’s just smart. The people who love you will sleep better, and so will you.

🏨 Accommodation Strategy

Where you stay matters more than most first-time solo travelers realize — not just for comfort, but for safety.

Stay central, especially on your first night in a new city. Getting lost after dark in an unfamiliar neighborhood while jet-lagged is an avoidable experience. Read recent reviews specifically for solo travelers — look for mentions of well-lit entrances, responsive staff, and secure room locks. Americans prioritize safety when choosing accommodation for a solo trip, and for good reason: your hotel or hostel is your base of operations and your fallback when things go sideways.

For women specifically: if a hotel staff member announces your room number loudly at check-in, ask quietly to be reassigned and have the number written rather than spoken. Request a room not at the end of a long, isolated corridor. These are small things that make a real difference.

📱 Digital Safety: Your Phone Is Your Lifeline

Your phone is your most important safety tool when traveling alone. The key apps cover offline maps for when you have no data, emergency contacts, location sharing, and translation in situations where communication is critical. Expedia

Before you leave:

Download offline maps — Google Maps and Maps.me both work without data. Do this before you land, not after.
Use a VPN on public WiFi — airports, cafés, and hotel lobbies are prime targets for data theft. Avoid public Wi-Fi networks without protection; use a trusted VPN to encrypt your data.
Save local emergency numbers — not just 911; know the local equivalent for your destination. In the EU it’s 112. In Japan it’s 110 for police, 119 for ambulance.
Carry a portable charger — a dead phone in an unfamiliar city is a vulnerability. Always carry one.
Share your location — with a trusted person at home. iPhone’s “Share My Location” or Google Maps’ live location sharing costs nothing and provides real peace of mind.

🧠 Trust Your Gut — The Most Underrated Safety Tool You Have

Every experienced solo traveler will tell you some version of the same thing: the moments where things went wrong were almost always preceded by a feeling they ignored.

The too-friendly stranger who appeared out of nowhere offering to help. The shortcut that felt slightly off. The situation that had accumulated one too many small red flags.

Your gut has been calibrated by a lifetime of social experience. In unfamiliar environments, it works harder than usual. When something feels wrong — even if you can’t articulate why — trust that. Leave the situation. Find a busy, public space. You can always apologize later for being rude. You can’t undo ignoring a warning signal.

👩 Specific Tips for Women Traveling Alone

72% of American women have already taken at least one solo trip — the highest rate of any country globally. The community of women who travel alone is large, experienced, and extraordinarily generous with advice. Here’s the distilled version: Kiwi.com

Dress with awareness, not fear. In conservative destinations, modest clothing genuinely reduces unwanted attention. This isn’t about shrinking yourself — it’s about moving through a place with less friction.
Be vague about your solo status when it matters. “My husband is meeting me later” is a sentence that has gotten many solo female travelers out of uncomfortable situations. Use it without guilt.
Carry a personal safety alarm. Small, loud, and effective. A compact doorstop alarm is also worth packing — particularly useful in accommodation with doors that don’t feel fully secure.
Connect with the community. Advice from solo female travel Facebook groups is trusted equally to advice from friends and family by most women who travel alone. Groups like Girls Who Wander Solo and Solo Female Travelers are genuinely invaluable resources before and during a trip.
Get travel insurance. Only about 52% of solo travelers carry travel insurance — which means nearly half are one medical emergency, theft, or cancelled flight away from a serious problem. Don’t be in that half.

🆘 If Something Goes Wrong

Stay calm, find a public place, and locate the nearest police station or tourist assistance office. Contact your country’s embassy or consulate if you need serious assistance — they exist for exactly this reason. Having travel insurance with a 24-hour assistance line means you have a human to call at 2am in a foreign country who speaks your language and knows what to do. That alone is worth the premium.

The vast majority of solo trips go smoothly. Preparation is why.

How to Meet People While Traveling Alone

Here’s the thing nobody fully prepares you for: solo travel can be profoundly social in a way that group travel almost never is.

When you travel with other people, you form a closed unit. You sit together at dinner, navigate together, share the same experiences at the same moments. It’s comfortable. It’s also, in a subtle way, a barrier — between you and the strangers at the next table, the fellow traveler at the hostel bar, the local who might have started a conversation if you’d been sitting alone.

Solo travelers don’t have that barrier. And the result, consistently, is that they meet more people, form more unexpected connections, and come home with better stories.

Searches for “travel groups” and “tour groups” hit record highs in 2026 alongside solo travel search interest — suggesting that what travelers actually want isn’t isolation, it’s independence with the option for connection. The two aren’t opposites. Here’s how to have both. Protect

🏨 Start With Where You Stay

Let’s put a myth to rest: you do not need to stay in a hostel to meet people while traveling alone. Plenty of solo travelers — myself included — prefer a private room, a quiet guesthouse, or a budget hotel, and still come home with a full address book of people they met on the road.

The key is choosing accommodation with some social infrastructure built in, whatever form that takes for your budget and comfort level.

Some Ideas

Boutique guesthouses and B&Bs are often surprisingly social — a shared breakfast table does more for meeting people than a hostel common room ever could. The conversations are longer, more relaxed, and tend to go somewhere real. Look for smaller properties with communal dining or a shared lounge, and read reviews that mention the owner or other guests.

Budget hotels with a bar or café attached give you a natural gathering point in the evening without any obligation. You can participate as much or as little as you want. A solo drink at the hotel bar with a book nearby is one of the most reliable conversation starters in travel.

Airbnbs in shared spaces — renting a private room in a host’s home rather than an entire apartment — put you in daily contact with a local who already knows the city intimately. Some of the best local tips and genuine connections I’ve had traveling alone have come from a five-minute conversation with an Airbnb host over morning coffee.

Coliving spaces are worth knowing about if you’re staying somewhere for a week or more — they’re designed around community, typically offer private rooms at reasonable rates, and attract exactly the kind of independent, curious travelers who are easy to connect with.

The common thread across all of these: choose somewhere smaller over somewhere anonymous. A 400-room chain hotel is efficient and comfortable and almost entirely socially invisible. A 12-room guesthouse where the owner remembers your name is something else entirely.

Hostels — including private rooms in social hostels — are still a genuinely good option if the vibe appeals to you and the price is right. But they’re one option among many, not a prerequisite for connection.

how to meet people traveling alone — Artic Cathedral, Tromso Norway

🚶 Free Walking Tours: The Secret Double Move

Free walking tours are one of the most reliable ways to meet people in any city — and almost nobody frames them this way. Most people book them for the city orientation. The social angle is a bonus they didn’t expect.

Walking tours give you a more intimate look at the city while getting interesting facts and information, and unlike bus tours, they also take you to spots buses can’t reach — cemeteries, alleyways, hidden squares. More importantly, they put you in a small group of people who are all curious, all open, and all moving at the same pace for two hours. Conversations happen naturally. By the end, you have at least two or three people you could message about dinner.

They’re also free — though tipping your guide is both customary and deserved. Find them through your hostel, through GetYourGuide, or simply by searching “[city] free walking tour.”

📱 Apps That Actually Work

The solo traveler app landscape has matured significantly. Beyond the obvious (Google Maps, translation apps), these are worth having:

Meetup — find local events matched to your interests, from language exchanges to hiking groups to photography walks. Particularly useful if you’re staying somewhere for more than a few days. It’s especially valuable for slow travelers staying in one city for an extended period.
GAFFL — find travel companions for shared trips and adventures. Browse itineraries, join someone else’s plan, or post your own travel dates. Popular with road trippers, adventure travelers, and long-term backpackers — and a practical way to split costs.
Bumble BFF — yes, really. The BFF section of Bumble exists specifically for platonic connections, and solo travelers have used it successfully to meet locals and fellow travelers in cities around the world.
Travello — a social network built specifically for travelers where you can meet people nearby, join meetups, and find group tours or activities that match your interests. Google
Couchsurfing Events — even if you’re not using the accommodation side, the events function connects you with locals hosting free meetups in cities around the world.

🍳 Take a Class

This is consistently underrated. A cooking class, a surf lesson, a pottery workshop, a language exchange — any activity with a structured beginning puts you in a room with other people who chose the same thing you chose. You already have something in common before anyone opens their mouth.

Go diving and you’ll meet other divers. Go to a cooking class and you’ll find fellow foodies. You’ve instantly got a shared interest and something genuinely fun to do together. GetYourGuide and Viator are the easiest places to find these across most destinations.

🍷 Sit at the Bar, Not the Table

This is the solo traveler’s most practical dining tip and it gets said so often because it’s genuinely true: a solo diner at a table is isolated. A solo diner at the bar is a conversation waiting to happen.

Bartenders talk. The person next to you is almost always open to a brief exchange. The energy is different — looser, more communal, less like you’re eating alone and more like you’re just part of what’s happening. In cities where solo dining at a table still carries a slight social weight, the bar removes it entirely.

Book the bar seat deliberately. Bring nothing to hide behind — no book, no headphones. See what happens.

🤝 Join a Group Tour for Part of the Trip

This doesn’t mean surrendering your independence. It means strategically using a group experience for the leg of your trip most likely to feel isolating — or most worth sharing.

A day trip, a multi-day small group tour through a region, a boat trip — any of these work. The availability of group tours is growing in importance for solo travelers, rising from 22% to 31% as a decision factor in 2026. The shift makes sense: it’s not that solo travelers want less independence, it’s that they’ve realized connection and independence aren’t mutually exclusive. You can spend six days exploring a country alone and then spend two days on a small group tour through the region you most wanted company for. That’s not compromise. That’s just smart travel. FTLO Travel

One Last Thing

The most important factor in meeting people while traveling alone has nothing to do with apps, hostels, or walking tours. If you want to meet people, don’t come across as closed. Put your phone down in social spaces. Make eye contact. Say yes to the dinner invitation from the person you met on the walking tour. Photoaid

The world is full of people who are just as open to connection as you are. Solo travel just puts you in the same room as them.

solo travel tips for beginners — A glass of red wine in a winery

FAQ: Solo Travel for Beginners

Is solo travel safe?

Yes — with the right preparation. Solo travel safety comes down to destination choice, accommodation strategy, and consistent habits like sharing your itinerary, downloading offline maps, and trusting your gut. The vast majority of solo trips go smoothly. The travelers who feel most confident aren’t the boldest ones — they’re the most prepared. For a full breakdown, see the safety section above.

Is solo travel safe for women?

Increasingly yes — and the data backs it up. Solo female travel in 2026 is safer than at any previous point in recorded travel history for travelers who choose the right destinations. Top-tier destinations for women including Iceland, Ireland, Japan, Portugal, and New Zealand offer what researchers call frictionless travel — reliable public transport, low street harassment, and strong legal protections. Smart preparation, destination awareness, and connecting with the solo female travel community before you go makes an enormous difference. Kiwi.com Go Campers

Is solo travel lonely?

Sometimes — and that’s okay to admit. The loneliness tends to hit hardest on the first day, at dinner tables, and on the journey home. But it’s almost always temporary, and the flip side of it is a kind of freedom and self-sufficiency that’s genuinely hard to find any other way. Most solo travelers report that they meet more people traveling alone than they ever did in a group. The section on meeting people above covers exactly how to make that happen.

What is the best first solo trip destination?

For international first-timers, Japan and Portugal consistently top the list — safe, navigable, solo-traveler-friendly, and genuinely worth the trip. For domestic first-timers, Nashville and Asheville are excellent starting points: easy to get to, social by nature, and forgiving of the learning curve that comes with any first solo trip. The best destination is ultimately the one that excites you enough to actually book it.

How much does a solo trip cost?

It varies widely by destination. Domestically, a solid 5–7 day solo trip to cities like Missoula, Asheville, or Nashville can come in under $1,200 per person. Internationally, Portugal and Thailand are among the most budget-friendly options at roughly $45–70 and $30–40 per day respectively. The consistent cost-saving moves across every destination: book early, travel mid-week, eat like a local, and lean into the free outdoor experiences that tend to be the highlight of any trip anyway.