Going it alone is firmly in style. Solo travel is on the up this year, with many travellers who spent the pandemic cooped up in house shares, family homes – or even relationships that subsequently ended – inspired to jet off alone. Adventure tour operator Wild Frontiers reports that traffic to the solo travel page on its website surged by 30 per cent in 2022 compared to last year, rising above pre-Covid levels.
“There’s a new need to seize the moment post-Covid, and people are not letting anything stop them from taking that dream trip, even travelling on their own,” Wild Frontiers founder Jonny Bealby told The Independent.
One intriguing portion of the solo travel pack is the “silver solo” – travellers within or approaching retirement age who feel newly empowered to get away without a travel companion.
This trend seems to have grown since the depths of the pandemic, too. Intrepid Travel told us that half of UK bookings this year have been from customers aged 50-plus, compared to a third in 2019. More than half of these bookers are solo travellers, and of those solos, 60 per cent are female. Meanwhile, river cruise specialists Uniworld saw an uplift of 43 per cent for solo travellers aged over 55 this year, compared to 2019.
“Over the last nine months, we’ve seen bookings on the rise from the over-50s market,” says Erica Kritikides, global product manager for Intrepid Travel. “I suspect a lot of that growth is being driven by the new premium range and we are seeing a big pick-up from solo travellers.”
There’s a new need to seize the moment post-Covid, and people are not letting anything stop them from taking that dream trip
Wild Frontiers
Traditionally a backpacker-spirited, local-bus-riding tour operator, Intrepid’s new premium range of tours launched last year, expanding to a total of 55 itineraries in 2022. These trips go to similar far-flung locations to its existing range, but groups spend more time at each stop, sleep in comfier four-star accommodation, and enjoy first class train transfers. This isn’t to say that they’re tame: the range includes an eco-lodge trip through the Amazon rainforest and a Ganges cruise in India, as well as a 10-day New Zealand itinerary and an India two-weeker. They’re partly inspired by the silver solo.
“It’s a time in your life where you’ve almost got that new-found freedom,” says Erica. “You might have kids who are fully grown, you might be retired. You’ve got more time to…
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