Pandemic travelling alone - in groups

After Ms Sheila Katz's husband died of a degenerative nervous system disorder in April, she knew she had to get away.

But he had been her travel partner and without him, she was hesitant to travel alone. The pandemic's ever-shifting travel regulations were intimidating as well.

So Ms Katz, 45, did something she had never done before: She joined a group tour.

"I wanted to not be totally alone, but also to be able to do my own thing when I wanted," she said.

So in July, she joined a group of 17 fully vaccinated travellers heading to Belize, making friends as she snorkelled, visited Mayan ruins and took chocolate-and tortilla-making classes.

Solo travellers like her are joining guided tours at unprecedented rates, say tour organisers, with some companies reporting single bookings up 300 per cent over those from couples, families or clusters of friends.

The majority of these lone travellers have never taken a group trip before. After years of planning their own trips and travelling solo or with a partner, the pandemic - with its months of isolation and its Byzantine travel rules for testing, masks and vaccination - has pushed them to change their ways.

Ms Katz, a sociology professor at the University of Houston, had just endured the tenure-review process while also navigating her grief. She was exhausted and had no interest in parsing border regulations or stressing out about potential exposure to the corona-virus.

For her trip to Belize, everyone in the group had to be vaccinated, which lifted a proverbial weight from her shoulders.

"Had it not been a pandemic, I probably would have just gone to lie on a Caribbean beach for seven days," she said.

The National Tour Association (NTA), a professional organisation for tour operators, said the group travel industry as a whole has yet to recover from the pandemic's blow to its business.

"Half of our tour operators don't expect their company to outperform 2019 metrics until 2023," said NTA's vice-president of communication, Mr Bob Rouse.

But even before the pandemic, group travel was gaining a foothold among two key demographics: women and millennials.

Travel companies catering specifically to women have increased by 230 per cent over the past six years, while a flurry of new travel start-ups have grown by marketing towards those born after 1980.

Women's interest in group travel is perhaps most notable.

Ms Katalina Mayorga, chief executive of El Camino Travel, which offers small group tours for women, says that sales for the fourth quarter of this year are 200 per cent higher than the same period in 2019, and 65 per cent of those booking are doing so as solo travellers.

Ms Allison Scola, founder of Experience Sicily, says solo women on her tours now make up 66 per cent of guests. At Indus Travels, 80 per cent of customers booking spots on tours for solo travellers are now women.

"Even solo travellers want to travel with people sometimes, especially people whom they have something in common with," said Ms Amanda Black, founder of The Solo Female Traveler Network, where women can book individual tickets for group trips across the globe.

After months of isolation, it seems, many women miss socialising. "I live alone, so it's been a lot of alone time," said Ms Jes Maxfield, 34, a client service manager in Boston who booked a trip to Greece in August with FTLO Travel.

The group included eight women and one man, and the man broke his foot on the second day and had to fly home.

By the end of the trip, a sisterhood had emerged. "It was really nice to meet so many similar, like-minded women and to share a beautiful place with them," said Ms Maxfield.

The idea of safety in numbers also plays a part.

"To hike through the woods by myself isn't exactly the safest thing to do," said Ms Emily Cardona, 36, a New Yorker who took outdoor group trips over the past 18 months with Outerthere, a tour company based in New York City.

The trips were a refuge, she said, from the stress of her two jobs as a senior care manager and mental health therapist.

"It's almost as if the difficulties of travelling during the pandemic have helped millennials get over the idea that group tours aren't cool," said Ms Tara Cappel, CEO of FTLO Travel, which caters to 20-and 30-somethings.

In many cases, the shift to millennial-focused marketing is redefining the idea of what it means to travel on an organised tour in the first place.

"It was really intimate and we kind of just looked like some friends who were travelling," said Ms Autumn Lewis, an attorney in Los Angeles who took her first-ever group tour, a trip to Greece run by Tripsha, in July.

"It's not like you're having an experience where you just follow the guy with the umbrella."

Mr Terry Dale, president and CEO of the US Tour Operators Association, said: "If there's one thing the pandemic has shown us, it's that the value of tour operators has increased tenfold."

Like travel agents who are also enjoying a resurgence in popularity, much of that value comes when a traveller can delegate the pandemic mental load, answering questions such as: On which day do I need to take my PCR test?

After months of isolation, the group tour's strongest draw may be its most obvious: It comes with a built-in community.

"Women who have been booking tours with us have definitely been doing so because they want someone who can navigate the Covid-19 restrictions. But there are a number of other motivations," said Ms Meg Jerrard, co-founder of Solo Female Travellers, which runs small group tours for women.

Safety is a major concern, she said, and "the stigma of being alone is another key motivator".

Ms Katz, the widow in Texas, had expected that for some meals on her tour, people would go off and do their own thing. She was wrong.

"Our tour guides had to go out of their way because we all wanted to have all of our meals together," she said. "I think we were all just so thankful to not be in our living rooms, staring at the wall."

NYTIMES