Why More Women Are Choosing to Go Together, Not Alone

The rain had not let up all morning when our small group ducked into a sixteenth century crypt on Clare Island, unwrapping sandwiches next to the resting place of Grace O’Malley, Ireland’s legendary pirate queen. We had not planned to take shelter with her, but the Atlantic weather does not care about a schedule. My five fellow hikers and I sat there laughing about soaked socks and swapping stories like we had known each other for years, not days.

That was the moment I understood what everyone had been telling me about women only travel. It was not really about the hiking, or even about Ireland. It was about who I was hiking with.

I took that trip last year with Wilderness Ireland, joining a small group tour along the west coast that wound through the limestone landscape of the Burren, out to the Aran Islands, and along the Cliffs of Moher. Our group was compact, just a handful of women plus a guide, which meant there was no fading into the background. Within a day we knew each other’s stories, our fears about the muddy trail sections, and the particular way each of us handled a steep climb. By the end of the week, strangers had become the kind of friends who check in on each other months later.

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I am not alone in noticing this shift. According to Virtuoso, a network of luxury travel advisors, more than seventy percent of solo travelers today are women, and roughly half of them are divorced, separated, or widowed. I fall into this demographic. Those numbers tell a story I recognize firsthand. Many of us are not waiting around for a partner to be ready. We are choosing to go, and increasingly, we are choosing to go together.

When the Trip Isn’t Women Only, But Still Feels Like Sisterhood

Not every meaningful group trip needs to be marketed as women only to deliver that same sense of connection. Last summer I traveled to Peru with my friend and podcast cohost Heide Brandes, booking a small group tour through Exoticca that took us from Lima through the Sacred Valley to Machu Picchu and Cuzco. The trip was mixed company, open to any traveler who booked it, yet the experience still had that same rhythm of shared discovery. We stood together at the Machu Picchu citadel after the train ride up from Ollantaytambo, sampled ceviche in Lima’s Miraflores neighborhood, and wandered San Blas in Cuzco comparing notes on altitude and awe in equal measure.

What Peru taught me is that the “who” often matters more than the “how.” Traveling with a friend who understands your pace, your curiosity, and your need for a coffee before any conversation happens can turn even a large mixed group tour into something that feels personal and supportive. Heide and I left that trip with inside jokes, a shared appreciation for pre Columbian textile history, and plans to keep doing this.

Building Trips Specifically for Women, From the Ground Up

While Ireland and Peru showed me two different flavors of group travel, my friend Melynda Harrison has built an entire career around the version designed specifically for women. Known online as Traveling Mel, Melynda is a Montana based writer and adventure trip leader who founded TravelingMel.com and YellowstoneTrips.com. She designs and leads small group adventure trips for mostly women travelers, both close to home in the Greater Yellowstone region and further afield in Europe, built around days full of outdoor adventure and evenings meant for connecting with the people you are traveling alongside.

Melynda joined Heide and me on an episode of our podcast, Untethered and Wanderwise, to talk about Yellowstone and what draws women specifically to her small group trips. Her approach reflects exactly what outfitters across the industry are discovering right now. Companies like AdventureWomen, which has run women only trips since 1982, Backroads, which added its first women only departures in 2024 and quickly expanded them, and EF Go Ahead Tours, which is launching its first women only departures in 2026, are all responding to the same demand. Women want to travel, and they increasingly want to do it surrounded by other women who understand exactly why they are there.

Why This Trend Isn’t Slowing Down

Talk to enough women who have taken one of these trips and a pattern emerges. Many of us spend years as caretakers for everyone else, and there is real burnout in that role. A trip built around other women, whether that means an organized women only departure or simply choosing the right travel partner for a mixed tour, offers something rare: a space where you are not managing anyone else’s needs but your own.

That was true in the crypt on Clare Island, and it was true standing above the Sacred Valley with Heide. It is the reason Melynda has built a business around it, and it is the reason I keep coming back to this idea for Explore More Getaways. You do not have to wait for the perfect companion or the perfect moment. Whether you join a dedicated women only tour or simply travel with a friend who gets it, going together might be the most rewarding way to go.