Words by Aisha Kabir
The idea of solo travelling has grown increasingly popular over the past few years. Studies show the main reason being is because of the freedom and independence it provides. Solo travel is most common amongst millennials due to the amount of access there is these days to travel planning resources. In comparison to older generations, before the internet, information about travel was not as easily accessible and the process took much longer. Now with the internet, there is a wide variety of deals and trips available online for anyone to view and within a few short steps it has been made easy to book travel. The internet has information on practically anything and everything and can be found within a short amount of time at any given moment at your very fingertips.
Travelling alone does not come cheap. In the last decade, Airbnb’s were invented and became useful for people travelling on a budget since they did not have to spend as much money as they would for hotels. For this reason, airbnb’s have become especially favourable for students. Airbnb is a service that lets property owners rent out their spaces to travellers looking for a place to stay. This invention has made travelling alone more accessible since there is less of a demand for people’s money and is known to be mostly safe.
Another reason solo travel is so common amongst Millennials is that they’re deciding to have children much later, typically around their 30s – 40s. The pressure to start a family is overwhelming, and for many millennial women who have spent the last decade focused on building their career in the wake of the 2008 recession, this is a complex question to answer. The standardised mean age for women having children has been increasing since the mid-1970s and reached a record high at 30 years in 2019. The most common age at childbirth for women born in 1974 who reached 45 years in 2019 was 31 years, an increase compared with 23 years for their mothers’ generation born in 1948. Women now have more economic options rather than just to get married and have children. Since women are working now more than ever, travel has become a priority for them.
A recent study shows the average age of mothers at childbirth in the United Kingdom from 1938 to 2019.
Between 1991 and 2019 there has been a clear trend of mothers having children later in life in the United Kingdom, with the average age of mothers increasing from 27.7 in 1991 to 30.7 by 2019 and is still relevant to this day.
Everyone has their reasons for solo travelling, whether it be relating to work or for personal matters. Most recently however, it has become a sort of trend. This trend started back in 2o16. According to Booking.com, Baby Boomer solo travel is now leading the trend, having seen 40% of 55 to 64-year old’s having travelled alone last year. Solo travellers travel frequently, around 3 or more times a year and make up 11% of the overall travel market. Solo travel has been trending upwards since 2016, showing percentage growth around 131% in google searches ‘solo travel’. And it’s women who are leading the way to travel solo, with 84% of overall market bookings.
