Woman Traveling Overseas

If you're a woman and you're reading this, you might be interested in learning that the tour company "Women Traveling Together", sponsored a survey of 500 women and 68% of the women in the survey said they had traveled alone at least once in the last 3 years. A 1999 Profile of U.S. Resident Travelers Visiting Overseas Destinations Report noted that 19.5 million U.S. citizens traveled overseas for leisure. Of those 19.5 million, almost 9 million were women and their average age was 43.

Luckily for female travelers, there are resources out there that make traveling for women safer and more convenient. While most of us knowingly travel alone, it doesn't mean we don't want someone to chat with or meet up with during our journey. There are tons of resources for women who travel. One of my favorites is the website Journey Woman. This website is chock full of resources for women traveling alone and with girlfriends. They even offer a free monthly newsletter if you're interested in one. The thing I love about the Journey Woman website is the way you can find information for almost any place you're thinking about traveling to that other women have already visited. They use Journey Woman to post information about hotels, tours, tour guides, B&B's and dozens of other services by women and for women. I used Journey Woman to check out safe hotels in England and found some great reviews for the hotel I had been thinking about that swayed me in my decision to stay there.

One of the really useful links that Journey Woman has is a service called Hermail.net. Hermail is a safe way to find at least 2 contacts in the city to which you are traveling and anonymously exchange email with them. This is a wonderful, FREE service available to any woman that might be traveling to somewhere she's never been and who would like to know more from someone who is in the know. In my case, I exchanged e-mails with another woman who was living in London and who offered some wonderful suggestions about where to eat and some fun things to do. In the course of our email exchange, we agreed to meet for lunch. It is a great thing to meet new people and to know that during your travels you will encounter a friendly face that can also direct you to see things and visit places in a way no guidebook can match. Just because you're a woman and you've chosen to travel alone doesn't mean you have to be lonely.

Just in case you've decided you don't want to travel alone but don't think your husband, boyfriend, or significant other would be your best travel partner, you are not alone! In the past 12 months, the tour company, "Women Traveling Together" surveyed women joining tours and found that 65% of those surveyed left husbands or boyfriends at home to join an all-women tour. "Of the women surveyed, 80% believed that men and women have different interests when on vacation, requiring both persons to compromise their idea of a good time. The remaining 20% of the women surveyed believed that men are not that interested in travel and would be just as happy staying home."

There are several websites that now cater to pairing or grouping single women with other women that have like interests as travel partners. Websites like women-traveling.com and gutsywomentravel.com now cater to the single woman traveler that doesn't want to travel with her boyfriend or husband but doesn't necessarily want to travel alone.

Women living alone represent more than half (58%) of one-person households and we don't have to vacation with husbands and/or family like we did 30 years ago. We can travel alone and with friends and be the better for it. Use your resources, decide how you want to travel and get out there and see the world!