For Worldwide Girls’s Day, Euronews Journey spoke to female-led journey firms about what girls actually need.
For Worldwide Girls’s Day, Euronews Journey spoke to female-led journey firms about what girls actually need.
Girls travellers have been on the rise in the previous couple of years: 71 per cent of solo travellers are girls – of which 25 per cent are 65 or older, based on Virtuoso’s August 2024 tendencies report and Skift.
Altering societal norms and better monetary independence provides us girls the liberty to discover extra. We get to deal with private progress, empowerment, and chase journey.
What’s extra, girls have a tendency to offer journey and cultural experiences equal weight, a 2024 International Rescue Survey revealed.
Why would possibly that be? As a result of we need to interact extra deeply with native practices and customs, as a part of an try to hunt out genuine connections past typical ‘fly and flop’ tourism.
This altering development has led extra feminine entrepreneurs with eager perception to enterprise into the journey trade. Euronews Travels speaks to a number of of those journey ‘sheroes’ making waves.
Girls search out extra genuine experiences
Many girls don’t get the chance to journey a lot throughout youthful years, as a consequence of tasks like marriage, kids, a profession, or socioeconomic and cultural components.
As such, the primary time girls are inclined to take an extended or extra adventurous journey is later in life, which leads some to decide on smaller, typically extra intimate group excursions.
“There is a rising need to discover smaller, quaint, and charming locations that provide wealthy tradition, native connections, and a way of discovery,” explains Ellen Flowers, journey blogger at The Perennial Fashion.
“Fairly than the hustle and bustle of main cities, girls travellers are drawn to hidden villages within the French countryside, serene coastal cities in Portugal, or lesser-known gems in Jap Europe.”
Gabrielle Sensible, founding father of Stroll Discuss Eat France, recognises this need and helps older, first-time – and sometimes solo – girls travellers really feel extra comfortable by unhurried French meals and wine excursions.
“I supply a really stress-free 10 day retreat within the French countryside of the Dordogne area. Right here, we go light: strolling, speaking, consuming. It’s a slower tempo of journey and actions. We now have gentle workouts every morning overlooking medieval castles and villages,” says Sensible. “We go to beautiful prehistoric caves and go to vineyards and purchase native produce from markets to take dwelling and cook dinner collectively.”
In a number of instances, Sensible’s friends have discovered shut companions on these journeys that they then select to journey with 12 months after 12 months.
Customized excursions are designed for each energetic and ‘hobbyist’ feminine travellers
Many ladies-only journeys are inclined to focus round particular hobbies, resembling portray, horse-riding, and cooking. Future Market Insights estimates that the particular curiosity tourism market may hit $5.1bn (€4.7bn) by 2025.
Excursions by Marie, for instance, specialises in gardening journeys to France, Holland, Belgium, Italy, England, and Portugal.
“My purchasers are backyard golf equipment and teams of passionate gardeners,” says founder Marie-Elisabeth Offierski. “Arms-on experiences resembling a cooking class, a flower-arranging workshop or a pictures session are well-liked. Girls need to be taught – that’s a part of benefiting from their time away.”
In different instances, girls need to discover how different girls stay, and get a greater understanding of their tradition and lives, by championing native girls entrepreneurs and spending time with feminine artisans.
“Our hottest women-only journeys join feminine travellers with girls of their host nation, typically in ways in which wouldn’t be accessible in blended teams,” explains Sarah Religion at Accountable Journey. “These holidays are very a lot about seeing a rustic by the eyes of the ladies who stay there.”
Energetic holidays, in the meantime, present the sense of accomplishment and social connections that girls take pleasure in – however by a extra partaking low-impact train, resembling strolling, biking and climbing.
UK-based Strolling Girls, which has been offering strolling holidays solely for ladies since 2021, provides completely different ranges of treks relying on expertise. It additionally sprinkles in native tradition by collaborating with girls winemakers, cheesemakers, and cooks. Demand is clearly there, as the corporate has grown from 300 friends of their first 12 months to 1,000 at present.
The corporate’s all-female guides go at a gentle tempo to make sure your entire group reaches the summits. “We hear this isn’t all the time the case in blended hikes the place typically girls could be left behind,” says Ginny Lunn, one of many joint house owners.
Girls of all ages actively search out journey
Whether or not kayaking, trekking or backpacking, older girls are more than pleased to problem themselves and discover the unknown. For a lot of, it’s a way of non-public freedom.
“Girls over 50 are proving that thrill-seeking has no expiration date,”says Kathy McCabe, govt producer of Dream of Italy.
“From cutting down cliffs to trekking by distant landscapes, these fearless explorers are breaking stereotypes and displaying that significant, energetic journey is for everybody.”
Even higher-end journey experiences, resembling a stress-free cruise, now supply alternatives for ladies to step out of their consolation zone and check out new actions, and McCabe expects to see extra spa-at-sea sanctuaries and unique girls’s excursions within the coming months.
“We’re beginning to see a variety of cruise traces launching women-only voyages that includes female-led expeditions, immersive actions, and adrenaline-packed actions like scuba diving and polar plunges,” she says.
This rising development of journey journey will not be solely restricted to the extra mature girls, as co-founder Erika De Santi of WeRoad, an Italian scaleup specializing in group journey journey for Gen Z and millennial solo travellers, observes:
“Whether or not it is younger professionals taking a break from the workforce, these trying to rediscover themselves after a breakup or main life occasion, or these of their 20s-40s who discover themselves at completely different life levels from their associates and unable to discover a journey companion – girls are more and more searching for out journey, and going it alone,” she says.
The stresses and strain of recent life, particularly on youthful adults, have prompted a growth in wellness journey too, additional influenced by social media platforms TikTok and Instagram.
WeRoad’s group yoga journeys, for instance, have seen a 400 per cent enhance in bookings.
“These experiences aren’t nearly rest but additionally private progress and emotional rejuvenation, providing travellers the prospect to disconnect from their on a regular basis lives and join with others,” provides De Santi.
Girls fear about security when travelling
A number of of the female-led firms Euronews Journey spoke to informed us they like to companion with women-owned lodges and transport companions as a method to assure consolation and security.
This contains selecting feminine guides who’ve a singular girls’s perspective into the native tradition and know how you can take care of harassment and women-focused scams.
Offering a superb assist community in case of points or emergencies can be paramount.
Byway, a journey firm specialising in flight-free holidays, focuses on offering this assist with a WhatsApp chat which its feminine travellers can use all through the vacation, together with a 24/7 emergency telephone quantity.
“We all the time guide non-public sleeper cabins and personal lodge rooms, and deal with safer neighbourhoods with good nighttime lighting,” explains founder Cat Jones, who provides that as a female-led firm all girls travellers are “effectively catered for by default.”
Megan Vila, innovation supervisor at London-based TourAxis, agrees that girls deserve extra recommendation when navigating new locations and cultural variations: “Understanding native customs, advising which areas or what behaviours to keep away from, and placing a plan in place ought to they really feel unsafe are the most effective methods to do that.”