I'm Ready to Become Part of the Emerging Trend of Females Vacationing Without Their Family – and Traveling Solo

A couple of weeks back, I got an message about a press trip I would not countenance. It was long haul and it was about fitness, so it would have entailed a lot of physical activity and early bedtimes. Even if I enjoyed those activities, I wouldn't have been desperate to spend a week with other people who enjoyed them. But even as I was deleting it, 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. Clearly, it would be amazing. So I said “yes” and it turned out they meant the other Zoe Williams, the one who is a physician and used to be a Gladiator, and is incredibly fit already, and yes, in hindsight, that should have been clear all along.

So, without intending to and without going anywhere, I've arrived in the most rapidly expanding 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 females. They have households, they have busy social lives, they have partners, 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 doing it alone. People are big into trekking, biking, paddling, all the things that couples are least likely to be aligned on in their interest. If anyone is also tired of taking teenagers to the world's marvels, 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 get here. My father's wife, who is totally modern in every way, would get detained before she’d go into a Belgian 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.