I am Ready to Become Part of the Brave New World of Women Vacationing Without Their Family – and Traveling Solo

A couple of weeks back, I received an email about a press trip I would never countenance. It was long haul and it was about health, so it would have entailed a lot of exercise and early bedtimes. Although I enjoyed those activities, I wouldn't have been eager to spend a week with other people who enjoyed them. But even as I was hitting delete, I started to wonder what that would really be like: being somewhere different, without anyone to accommodate except myself, without anything to do except exactly what I wanted. Plainly, it would be incredible. So I said “yes” and it turned out they meant the different Zoe Williams, the one who is a physician and used to be a TV Gladiator, and is incredibly fit already, and yes, in hindsight, that should have been obvious all along.

So, without intending to and without going anywhere, I've arrived in the fastest-growing travel demographic: the woman traveling alone, between 45 to 60. One tour operator stated that nearly half (46%) of their reservations are now people travelling alone, and 70% of those are women. They have families, they have busy social lives, they have spouses, their world is absolutely full with people they could go on holiday with – and that’s why they (we) need a holiday on their own.

The more daring the travel, the more people are doing it alone. People are very interested in trekking, cycling, paddling, all the things that partners are unlikely to be aligned on in their enthusiasm. If anyone is also tired of dragging teenagers to the wonders of the world, just to watch them be on their phones and field questions such as “how much longer do we have to be here?”, they are too discreet to mention it.

The real mystery is why it’s taken so long to reach this point. My father's wife, who is completely modern in every way, would get arrested before she’d go into a European restaurant on her own, and even though I mock her for this often, I must have had a vestige of it myself, to be this old before it even occurred to me to travel solo. Now I just have to go somewhere.