Why Extra Girls Are Touring Solo, Collectively

A couple of months earlier than her marriage ceremony, Mackenzie Gange-Anderson took a trip to Morocco. However she didn’t go along with her soon-to-be husband. As a substitute, she went with a bunch of girls she’d by no means met earlier than. “The ladies-only side actually appealed to me,” says Gange-Anderson, a human assets analyst from Chicago.

Throughout her eight-day journey by means of the Atlas Mountains with Intrepid, Gange-Anderson had the prospect to find out about conventional methods of life. She drank tea in a cave and swapped tales with girls goat herders. She had dinner in a personal house, feasting on hen tagine and home made bread. And on lengthy hikes between villages, her fellow vacationers grew to become pals.

“It simply felt good to produce other girls round, all searching for one another,” she recollects.

Girls opting to journey with different girls is now one of many largest traits in journey, based on Virtuoso, a collective of luxury-minded advisors. At this time, greater than 70 p.c of all solo vacationers are feminine, Virtuoso says. About half of these people are divorced, separated, or widowed, that means many ladies are deliberately leaving a associate at house—and looking for the sense of safety and sisterhood that comes with a small-group journey.

“It’s not nearly touring,” says Paige Davis. She’s the president of AdventureWomen, an organization that’s been operating journeys completely for girls since 1982. “It’s additionally about constructing relationships, constructing neighborhood, and constructing friendships—that’s one thing distinctive,” Davis explains. Although the model has been round for greater than 40 years, it too has been innovating these days. This yr, the agency launched a 12-day private-jet journey that may introduce vacationers to girls cooks, vintners, and entrepreneurs
throughout Europe.

Different firms are working to fulfill the necessity for women-only journeys. Backroads, for instance, added its first batch in 2024 “as a little bit of an experiment,” says government vice chairman Avery Hale Smith. “We had been all blown away by how immensely widespread it grew to become.” The corporate has doubled down for 2025, including strolling and mountain climbing excursions in additional than a dozen new places, together with Nepal and Japan. “Girls appear significantly considering far-flung locations,” Hale Smith says, “as a result of they’re not essentially locations that they could go on their very own.”

EF Go Forward Excursions plans to launch its first women-only departures in 2026, with itineraries to locations together with Egypt, Eire, Italy, and Peru. The corporate was motivated by visitor suggestions, says model president Heidi Durflinger, who notes that 60 p.c of girls touring with EF need “to rediscover themselves” by means of journey.

Cruise strains are additionally embracing the development: Aurora Expeditions is placing collectively its first women-only voyage, an Antarctica odyssey aboard the 71-cabin Sylvia Earle slated for 2027 with a crew of guides led by girls. Uniworld Boutique River Cruises, in the meantime, is planning an inaugural women-only voyage this August, a visit by means of Burgundy and Provence hosted by Saturday Evening Reside alumna Rachel Dratch.

For Katie Gallagher, a Glenshaw, Pennsylvania–based mostly pharmacist, touring solo with like-minded girls has turn into a lifestyle. Having taken her first AdventureWomen outing in 2017, to the Canadian Rockies, she’s now gearing up for her 14th journey with the corporate: a safari in Tanzania.

“Girls on the whole are caretakers for different individuals, and there’s a degree of burnout with that,” she says. “Journeys like this are a magical form of escape.”

MORE OUTFITTERS FOR WOMEN-ONLY TRIPS

Butterfield & Robinson

B&R’s women-only assortment debuted in 2024; extra journeys are scheduled for this yr. One choice, an eight-day biking itinerary in Southeast Asia, features a assembly with a feminine guerrilla who fought in the Vietnam Battle.

Women’ Information to the World

Began in 2009 as Women’ Information to Paris, this model has now gone world, with deep dives like an eight-day late-summer Finland journey centered on why the nation persistently ranks because the world’s happiest.

Pack Gentle International

Founder Daybreak Booker created this firm to higher serve Black girls ages 40 and over, with itineraries comparable to a nine-day September island-hop in Greece that may mix sightseeing with seaside time.

Street Scholar

This nonprofit, which focuses on instructional holidays for individuals ages 50 and up, affords practically 30 women-only departures, together with a six-day tour of California artwork museums.

Wild Terrains

A small-group specialist, this firm prioritizes supporting female-owned companies. One in every of its bestsellers is an eight-day journey by means of Portugal, the place friends get to color alongside a Lisbon road artist.

Zephyr Adventures

A brand new July journey for novice hikers contains wilderness-safety suggestions throughout a five-day tour of Montana’s Beartooth Mountains.

A model of this story first appeared within the June 2025 difficulty of Journey + Leisure underneath the headline “The New Women’ Journey.”