PARIS, March 4 — Travel isn’t only about getting away with one’s partner, family or friends; sometimes a solo journey is the order of the day.
These types of getaways, which encourage introspection, saw a surge on the Airbnb platform last year. But the destinations being booked for such travel may not be what you’d expect.
Get away to a far-flung destination, but alone. While these types of trips were already popular in the past, they seem to have experienced a boom after borders reopened following various pandemic-related lockdowns and restrictions.
Just as travel by camper van offered a way to see unfamiliar locations while respecting healthy distances as well as allowing travellers to better connect with destinations off the beaten path once they cut the engine, these solo travel jaunts put the focus on connecting with oneself, in a context where many find themselves in need of a mental wellness boost.
Solo travel is definitively on the rise: rental accommodation giant Airbnb reports that stays booked by a single person jumped by 33 per cent in 2022 on the platform.
Whether solo travel is taken for the purpose of an interior journey or as a new personal or professional challenge, the idea of being able to discover a new setting without being held back by anyone else’s needs and demands is proving irresistible to many.
A solo trip has many draws. But contrary to stereotypes of the solo journey, those taking the plunge don’t necessarily look to hit the open road or get away from the crowds in a remote nature-filled location. Instead, the city-break seems to be more appealing — at least from the point of view of reservations made on Airbnb.
When it comes to an urban escapade, the cities that received the most solo travellers were Paris, London, New York, Los Angeles, Seoul, Toronto, Sao Paulo, Mexico City, Atlanta and Madrid. As for the French capital, not only is it the most popular city for all categories of travellers, but it attracted the largest number of women in the first quarter of 2022, with 570,000 nights booked.
For road trips, one may have thought that the countries ranked as the safest in terms of security would also be most popular among solo travellers.
For instance, in the fall of 2021, luggage storage site Usebounce named Iceland, Malta, Portugal, Croatia, Spain, Belize, Montenegro, Japan, Slovenia and Ireland as the top destinations in this regard.
This study also added other parameters to come up with its ranking, notably the quality of the youth hostels and the cost of public transport.
However, looking at Airbnb’s report, now offering a point of view on a national basis, the top locations may indicate some solo travellers want more adventure than that offered by a simple city-break; the United States, France, Brazil and Australia are the most booked destinations for solo trips.
For those who dream of undertaking a solo adventure, the accommodation giant aims to ease certain worries with a feature that allows travellers to share their itineraries with the person of their choice via the platform.
This is available for private and shared room reservations. — ETX Studio
