The idea of making proper friends with people you meet on holiday is so hilarious to British sensibilities that Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat turned it into a West End comedy.
The Unfriend, starring Lee Mack and Sarah Alexander as a British couple who meet Elsa, an American woman travelling solo, is based on the premise that she takes their polite suggestion of a visit as a genuine invitation.
The play may be funny, but it seems that increasing numbers of people are on Elsa’s side. Solo travel is on the rise and the chance to make lifelong friendships is at the heart of it. The number of people going on holiday by themselves has risen from 6% in 2011 to 16% in 2023 according to the Association of British Travel Agents, which said people had a “strong appetite to go it alone”. Some operators have seen big increases – solo bookings accounted for 46% of Tourhub’s business last year.
Solo doesn’t always mean alone though. Lots of solo travellers join group tours, as Jen Burton did last year. “I didn’t know anyone at all and turned up at the airport completely terrified,” said Burton, 40, who opened the Bea and Aud Lifestyle clothes shop in Buckingham last year. “Now I’ve made friends for life.”
She had recently split from her husband of 19 years, and had decided to join an Intrepid Travel trip to Jordan for 16 women organised by Claire and Laura Jopson, who run the travel blog Twin Perspectives.
“I walked up to some of the ladies in the check-in queue and straight away they kind of knew that I’d been having a really tough time,” she said. “The support you can get from a group of women you don’t even know is phenomenal.”
Burton, who was the oldest, added: “[I had] never laughed so hard in my whole life. But then in the next instance we’d have these amazing feminist chats.”
Since the Jordan trip, many of the women have stayed in touch and last week Burton was hosting an Australian friend she met while travelling. Norway is next. “This time I’ll share a room,” she said. “I felt like I was slightly missing out in my own room.”
Companies such as Just You and Flash Pack cater specifically for solo travellers, while others, including Newmarket Holidays, Riviera Travel and Jules Verne, offer solo-only or solo-friendly trips.
“Sixty per cent of our travellers are solo,” said Yves Marceau, vice president for products at G Adventures. He said the company went to great efforts to design tours that fostered friendships, making sure there was enough time for people to meet each other and mingle. Tour guides were trained to create a sense of camaraderie and to spot when people might not be getting on.
“A young man in his early 20s wrote to us about his trip,” Marceau said. “He was sharing a room with a guy who was 75. He said ‘my initial reaction was, Oh, my God, this is going to be a dreadful experience. But over the course of the first few days, I became so connected with this gentleman that we are still friends.’ Those [stories] are the reason we do this.”
G Adventures and some other firms, such as Hostelworld, have created their own apps with social elements, but smaller companies use other social media. Chris Bone, the founder of Adventure Solos, invites every tour member to a WhatsApp group when they book.
“It really breaks the ice,” Bone said. He runs adventure weekends and week-long expeditions around the UK, with activities including hiking, canoeing and climbing. “Often people might be travelling a long way, and they’ll car share or get the same train. And often people have been to events before.”
It means that an hour into a hike, Bone’s guests are very relaxed. “What’s really nice is that all this stuff comes flooding out. People have often been through a recent life change. But no one knows anyone else and [there are] no preconceived ideas.”
Not that every group creates friendships. “There were a couple of guys who were persistently late every day,” said Carole Railton, a body language expert and author, of a trip to Morocco. “We had buses picking us up or trains to catch, and they would amble down. People were grumpy because they were taking time out of everyone’s holiday.”
Joyce Connor, a makeup artist, was one of only two solo travellers on a trip to Vietnam, and the other woman was much older. “I’m 60,” she said. “I basically ended up being her carer for two weeks. It wasn’t fun. She didn’t know how to use her phone or check in for her flight. And she didn’t want to eat alone, but she only wanted to go to places that had English food. In Vietnam.
“But on another trip I met a woman on day two and it turned out we have a mutual friend. Now the three of us go out together.”
There are still plenty of solo travellers who avoid groups, and life has become easier for them. People used to look down on solo travellers, according to Georgie Darling, a freelance travel writer. “It was something people thought you did out of desperation. Now it’s become more of a ‘cool concept’.” Travel influencers on TikTok and Instagram, such as Janet Newenham, have shown that solo travel can be admirable, Darling said.
She stays in co-living spaces – hostels with private rooms and workplaces. “I look for expat groups in the city or town I’m at. So I’m in Mexico now, and this morning I’m going to a brunch for female entrepreneurs. Everyone is here with the intention of meeting new people – last night there was a taco bar crawl.
“I’ve just joined a WhatsApp group for women in London who are solo travelling. And already there’s been about 15 different trips arranged, with people saying ‘I’m going to be in Copenhagen this weekend’. These things are easy to find now.”
