I'm Ready to Become Part of the Emerging Trend of Females Leaving Their Family – and Holidaying Alone

A few weeks back, I got an message about a press trip I would never consider. It was long haul and it was about fitness, so it would have involved a lot of physical activity and early nights. Although I liked those things, I wouldn't have been eager to spend a week with other people who liked them. But even as I was deleting it, I started to think what that would actually be like: being somewhere new, without anyone to please except myself, without anything to do except exactly what I wanted. Plainly, it would be amazing. So I said “yes” and it emerged they meant the different Zoe Williams, the one who is a physician and used to be a TV Gladiator, and is extremely fit already, and yes, in retrospect, that should have been obvious all along.

So, without intending to and without going anywhere, I've arrived in the fastest-growing travel demographic: the female solo traveller, aged 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 households, they have busy 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 doing it alone. People are very interested in hiking, cycling, kayaking, all the things that partners are unlikely to be aligned on in their interest. If anyone is also tired of dragging 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 puzzle is why it’s taken so long to reach this point. My stepmother, who is totally modern in every way, would get arrested before she’d go into a European restaurant on her own, and even though I mock her for this often, I must have had a trace of it myself, to be this old before it even came to mind to travel solo. Now I just have to go somewhere.