How Solo Women Groups Are Redefining Adventure Travel

Solo travel is booming. More and more tour operators and travel companies are hopping on the bandwagon: Riviera Travel is dedicating an entire ship to solo cruisers, and adventure tour operator G Adventures introduced a “solo-ish” travel style last year.

The increased potential within the trades has also attracted established companies to branch out. U.K.-based legacy tour operator Solos is expanding in the U.S. market, having launched a travel advisor program this past May.

Examining these different companies and the markets they serve, an interesting trend emerges: the majority of these solo adventure travelers are women.

In a recent interview with Travel Market Report, EF World Journeys CEO Heidi Durflinger said that women make up approximately 80% of the travelers booking solo tours.

“It sparked a whole portfolio of tours that are not only with other female-identifying travelers… but [are] also led by female tour directors,” she explained.

AdventureWomen: A Leader in Women-Only Small Group Travel

Few travel companies have cornered this niche as effectively as the award-winning tour operator AdventureWomen.

Women-owned and dedicated exclusively to women-only itineraries tailored for solo adventurers, AdventureWomen is a leader in the active travel space. The company was founded in 1982 by Susan Eckert, and has spent over 40 years bringing women around the world through immersive, small-group journeys.

Today, AdventureWomen offers trips to more than 60 countries and has earned numerous industry honors, including being named one of the best tour operators by Travel + Leisure readers in 2024 and 2025, as well as receiving the 2025 Most Innovative Adventure Travel for Women award from International Explorer.

Paige Davis, president at AdventureWomen, sat down with Travel Market Report for an exclusive interview about the segment.

“There’s a lot more people talking about it,” she said, explaining the growth of women-only adventure travel. “Because people are talking about it, more women are reading about it and thinking about it.”

Davis also suggested that cultural attitudes around traveling solo have shifted.

“I think it’s just become way more common and way more acceptable for women to go after the things that they want to do and go to the places they want to go. And if their partner doesn’t want to do it, then that’s OK,” she said.

And it’s not just about traveling without a friend or significant other. Davis said a large part of the appeal for the travelers who book with AdventureWomen is the opportunity to meet like-minded people and forge lasting friendships.

“Every single person [on an AdventureWomen tour] is there by themselves, and they meet each other and make friends there.”

What Trends Are Driving Women-Only Adventure Travel in 2026?

Earlier this year, AdvetureWomen conducted a survey of 500 women aged 35 to 75 years that examined how and where women want to travel in 2026.

The survey found a strong interest in active travel, with hiking and trekking trips being the most popular (40%), followed by cultural journeys and explorations of historic sites (30%), and wildlife viewing and safaris (13%).

When asked about what travel styles are most popular with AdventureWomen’s core base, Davis said walking and trekking are the most in-demand, but was careful to specify that the category covers a range in activity levels and required fitness.

“These are women who do want to be active. They don’t want to be on a sedentary trip, they don’t want to be on a bus,” she explained.

Recently, AdventureWomen expanded its activity levels to five categories to include a “lower” activity level. Now, the trips range from the “easy pace” of level one to the “challenging” level five journeys.

“There is a big difference between hiking Kilimanjaro [or] trekking in Uganda and walking the streets of Cuba,” she told TMR. “We just have a bunch of trips that are very cultural that are semi-active… we don’t want to scare anybody off.”

The survey also showed that most women prefer about two to three hours of strenuous activity per day, with the rest of the time spent on other activities such as meals or cultural experiences. Davis told TMR this matched AdventureWomen’s internal data and approach to product design.

“Most people want diversity in their itinerary,” she explained. She warned that having too much of the same activity everyday can feel repetitive, and while there is a “very small core group of people” who want to do six to eight hours of hiking everyday, most women travelers want a “better balance of strenuous activity and comfort and relaxation.”

What Are AdventureWomen’s Most Popular Tours?

AdventureWomen’s survey found that over 45% of respondents said they were open to exploring anywhere they’ve never been, with Europe and Oceania (Australia and New Zealand) topping the list of desired regions.

Davis told TMR that some of the more popular AdventureWomen tours are in Europe, such as hiking in Spain and Northern Lights trips in Iceland.

“One of the most popular ones we have is Hiking the Camino in Spain,” she said. “That’s just a very iconic hike … Many people have it on their bucket list.”

That trip operates three times a year with two guides: one at the front and one at the back. Davis told TMR they designed it this way to allow women to truly hike at their own pace.

The tour operator has also seen demand for Oceania.

“We just added New Zealand this year for the first time and we’re adding Australia for the first time next year,” she told TMR. “New Zealand was so popular this year and people were disappointed that it wasn’t happening next year”

Davis also told TMR that AdventureWomen will put together trips for groups of three or more women who want to travel together.

“We have a program called Tailor-Made by AdventureWomen… that’s our custom or private group travel,” she explained. “Generally, if a group calls us and if there’s more than four of them traveling together, we will try to encourage them to do this because it really changes the dynamic of a group trip if there’s 14 people and six of them are all friends.”

The minimum AdventureWomen can do for these trips is three, and the tour operator can customize it to the group’s needs—whether that’s a multi-gen family trip, a group of women who went to school together, or a club with a shared interest.

“We can really customize anything that anybody wants,” she said.