I am Ready to Become Part of the Emerging Trend of Females Vacationing Without Their Family – and Holidaying Alone

A couple of weeks back, I got an message about a press trip I would never consider. It was overseas and it was about fitness, so it would have entailed a lot of physical activity and early bedtimes. Although I enjoyed those activities, I wouldn't have been eager to spend a week with other people who liked them. But even as I was hitting delete, I started to wonder what that would actually be like: being somewhere different, without anyone to please except myself, without anything to do except exactly what I wanted. Clearly, it would be incredible. So I said “yes” and it emerged they meant the other Zoe Williams, the one who is a physician and used to be a Gladiator, and is extremely fit already, and yes, in retrospect, that should have been clear all along.

So, without intending to and without going anywhere, I've arrived in the fastest-growing travel group: the woman traveling alone, between 45 to 60. One travel company stated that nearly half (46%) of their reservations are now people travelling alone, and 70% of those are females. They have families, they have hectic social lives, they have spouses, their world is absolutely lousy 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 undertaking it alone. People are very interested in trekking, cycling, paddling, all the things that couples 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 answer questions such as “how much longer do we have to be here?”, they are too tactful to mention it.

The real mystery is why it’s taken so long to get here. My stepmother, who is completely modern in every way, would get detained before she’d go into a European restaurant on her own, and even though I tease her for this constantly, 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.