According to the 2023 Road Scholar Solo Travel Report, 60% of solo travelers were married women. Which means that more and more women, including those in long-term relationships or marriages, are opting to travel solo and leave their partners at home. Why are so many married women choosing to travel without their spouses, and what does their travel experience look like instead?
To answer that second question specifically, we can turn to travel expert and entrepreneur Doni Belau, the founder of Girls’ Guide to the World (GG2W), a premier women-only travel company, launched in 2009, under its original name Girls’ Guide to Paris. By 2022, the company had been facilitating trips to more than 40 countries, so they appropriately updated the name!
In 2025, Doni and her team will be taking a group of women on a magical trip called Nordic Queens: An Enchanting Escape to Finland, scheduled to take place from August 26 to September 2. Throughout the 8-day adventure, the travelers will get to celebrate Finnish culture and the achievements of Finnish women, learn more about Finnish women’s resilience and innovation, get a glimpse into the lifestyle of people in the world’s happiest country, and explore a society that values and embraces women’s voices and contributions.
The trip features hands-on activities like traditional cooking classes and restorative sauna sessions, connections with influential Finnish women across various fields, iconic site visits, such as UNESCO-listed Suomenlinna Sea Fortress and Marimekko’s design hubs.
After the disappointing 2024 U.S. Presidential election and the symbolism of seeing a female candidate lose a big campaign for the second time in 8 years, what a refreshing vision of looking elsewhere in the world to see how women fare culturally and politically (Finland has had 3 female Prime Ministers, most recently Sanna Marin who was in office from 2019 to 2023, at the age of 34).
Knowing how life-changing solo travel can be, especially for women, we were excited to speak with Doni about the origins of Girls’ Guide To The World, her upcoming Nordic Queens trip, and the advice she would give a woman considering solo travel for the first time.
Where did your love of travel begin?
My love for travel was passed down to me from my father and mother. They both were adventurers in their own way. They took me to Mexico for a month when I was 8 years old and being from the midwest we drove all the way down. They had rented a house in a small village called Ajiic with two of their friends. The house was huge, had a cook and a gardener, and a pool – something that was completely foreign to me as a child from a small town in Nebraska. While there we put on a play as a fundraiser for the local orphanage so the disparity was obvious. That was the beginning of my eyes opening to the vast world as well as the many ways to live one’s life.
You founded the company Girls Guide To the World – what inspired its launch, and how has it evolved over the years?
It was inspired by my desire to combine three passions of mine, connection, female empowerment & travel. Girls’ Guide has evolved fairly dramatically from its beginning in 2009. Originally we were called Girls’ Guide to Paris and it was a content-based site – an online guide to Paris. Best Hotels/restaurants/activities from my POV. We have had an apartment there since 2000 and I spent hundreds of hours accumulating the pertinent Paris info. It wasn’t until 2011 when I led our first tour that the idea of tours took off.
I built the tour side of the business very slowly starting with one tour a year and then 2. After a few years, we branched out beyond France to the UK and then to Bali and other destinations. Interestingly it was the time we had during COVID-19 when my husband was able to join our small team and help build the business, rework the website, and eventually change the name to Girls’ Guide to the World that allowed us to really grow and blossom.
We’ve been booming since 2021 – over the past four years, we’ve grown to the point of being one of the largest women-only tour companies in the world. We have 65 tours going to 40 countries this year. We are one of the only companies that offer high-end trips to very small groups of women – 6-10 max and we never charge a single supplement.
You primarily cater to women traveling solo or with friends, which is a growing market. Can you tell us a little more about your clientele and why they seek out your company?
Women for the first time in history have significant means and many don’t want to “rough it”. They no longer want to wait for friends, partners, or family to travel – they are ready to go it solo. 85% or more come as solo travelers. We have ladies who travel with us from the ages of 21-88 and if you can walk you can come even if you are 100!
I never like to segment people into age groups, I love to see the interaction of women in their 20s with others in their 70s seeing how much they have to learn from one another. We aim for as much diversity as possible – it makes a trip so much richer. While most of our women hail from the US we also host Canadians, Aussies, those from the UK, and expats living elsewhere – anyone who speaks English can join us.
The most common age for all solo travelers is 45+ plus our ladies are quite accomplished women – they might be teachers, doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs, or pilots. We see a lot of women who are divorced, single, or widowed. In fact, 53% of women in America are single but we also have plenty of women who have partners who simply do not want to travel, can’t travel, or just do not want to go on this kind of trip. It’s fun for those of us who are married to get away for a bit and come back refreshed.
In your expert and experienced opinion, why do you think solo women traveling is such a growing trend? What has changed culturally and socially over the years for this trend to emerge?
The fact that 53% are single is a huge factor. Also women now more than ever before have money and most of the time they’ve worked for it or supported a partner who did while staying at home and taking care of everything else. Over the past 10 years, solo travel has become more normalized in our society as women continue to gain power and influence despite recent setbacks.
Covid also made us all rethink our priorities, having that 1 – 2 years of travel taken away from us made a lot of people realize they needed to grab the life of their dreams NOW and not wait any longer. Discovering the fragility of life is a driving force to get us off the fence and start traveling or doing whatever it is that excites and inspires us.
The recent data from Road Scholar highlighting how much senior women and married women travel solo is quite interesting. What is your take on this, and how does GG2W cater to this demo?
Their study showed that 60% of the solo female travelers to their brand are married. We have a different product and we haven’t seen the same thing. I’d say it’s reversed with us, more like 30-40% married or with partners with 60-70% being single. However, the fact that so many women who do have partners want, or even need to get away to have their own experiences speaks to women feeling more empowered which is a good thing.
There once was a time when a lot of women would tell me that they had to “ask their husband” if they could join our trip. I’m hearing that less and less now. I also believe once you’ve experienced a solo vacation while leaving your partner at home both of you realize that spending some time apart can refresh and renew a relationship. However, I notice that women under 40 don’t fret over leaving their partner for a week or more and their spouses are supporting it. It’s exciting to see this cultural shift taking place.
Later this year you are taking a group of women travelers on a Nordic Queens trip to Finland– can you give us more details about this, and why it is a particularly inspiring trip for women?
I found a group of women in Finland, affiliated with an important museum there who had come up with some novel womens-only day tours and I worked with them to expand and build upon their ideas to create a week focused on the women of Finland. Finland has been recognized by the UN World Happiness Report as being the happiest country in the world for 7 straight years so I figured we all had something to learn from the Finnish women.
This tour is the first of its kind for us. We will be meeting with women from all parts of society: artists, makers, designers, women in healthcare, government, NGO’s and hospitality to find out why they are the happiest women on earth. The goal? Learning their secrets, finding out what they do that we don’t so we can take some of these skills and ideas back home with us.
This isn’t just a research trip – we’ll be observing and learning in style as we do on all of our trips by staying in fabulous unique hotels and eating at Michelin-starred restaurants as well as local farmhouses. We are diving deep into the culture on this trip and we’ve included many hands-on experiences such as learning how to bake bread in a Finnish farmhouse or relaxing in the world’s only art sauna.
What kind of visibility, purpose and empowerment have you received from traveling, and how does GG2W offer this to women?
Solo travel is empowering. Why? Learning that you don’t need anyone by your side to explore, taste and feel the world as well as learn about other cultures and ways of life is itself empowering. Travel opens our eyes and our senses and according to science allows us to live longer. It can stave off depression and dementia – getting out of one’s routine is literally a lifesaver. On a recent retreat I just finished leading, a woman who is a wife and caretaker of a husband with Parkinson’s told me that her first-time solo traveling experience was the “best thing she’s ever done for herself”. I’ve heard that many many times. The word life-changing comes up a lot too.
We don’t just emphasize the travel aspect of the trip – bonding and sisterhood is at the core of what we do and we train our trip leaders to create a safe space that allows the entire group to bond together and individually with one another. This is why we keep our trips so small. We protect against the partitioning or segmenting of the group which can make some people feel as if they are in the “out” group – this is not something we allow to happen.
Creating a cohesive group where each woman supports the other is at the core of why these trips are empowering to women because the connection is so critical to us. Almost everyone who takes our trips stays in touch with one or more of the new friends she made while away. This is heartwarming to us and at the core of our mission. Our stated mission is this:
We exist to empower women to safely expand their presence, connections and belonging in the world.
(Scientific Info here.)
At a time in the United States when we see so many disparities still existing for women – wage and wealth gap, healthcare disparities, rollback of reproductive rights, and the lack of equality in leadership positions – how do you hope the trip to Finland will leave the travelers with a renewed sense of power after seeing what other women around the world have achieved?
While our trips cater to people who are more well-off than your average person, we still see disparity even within our groups. However, travel is a big equalizer. One lady who joins a trip might be a retired teacher who might have saved her entire life for this trip. She might be sitting next to a Bank VP who has enormous funds however when they connect it’s powerful. They realize how similar they are.
In turn, when we connect with the women we are going to meet in Finland and learn how they live, often with far less than what we have in the United States, we quickly observe that quality of life is not based on how much you have but how deep your connections are in your community, to yourself and to your family.
Gratitude is at the heart of happiness and we see time and again how observing other cultures allows us to understand more deeply how lucky we all are to have what we do have back at home. Knowing that you don’t need any more, that all the factors are present right now for your happiness is the most profound kind of empowerment there is.
If you could share one key piece of advice or some encouragement to the woman who is thinking about traveling solo for the first time, especially senior married women, what would it be?
The most common worries are these two:
- Navigating airports, flying alone, not speaking the language and finding where to go when I get there.
- Will I like the women on the trip and will they like me?
The first one is easy. Even when you are a bit fearful of something, it’s always good to get slightly out of your comfort zone. According to psychologists, this is an essential thing to do to keep yourself young at heart and feeling alive and vibrant. Doing it anyway even if you have some fear is good for us. There are info booths in every airport in the world and luckily the common default language around the world is English. We are privileged that this is the case because it could be Swahili or Dutch.
If you miss your plane or it gets delayed, there is always another one. Safety is a huge concern for women, but in reality, the world isn’t as unsafe as it seems. Most people you meet are helpful and kind, but of course, taking normal safety precautions is a best practice. The only time you are alone on our trips is getting to and from the destination so that alleviates a lot of concerns.
The 2nd one is the most empowering anxiety to conquer. Each one of us has a little bit of trauma living inside us from a fourth-grade lunch room experience where we found ourselves either sitting alone or at the “wrong” lunch table. At Girls’ Guide, we make sure NO ONE is ever on the “outs”. We don’t allow you to sit next to the same person night after night.
We encourage everyone to get to know each and every person on the trip simply by asking her questions. Every person has an interesting story to tell if you dig deep enough. We also train our facilitators to make sure that the more introverted get a chance to speak and tell their stories. They are often the most interesting people in a group.
The other thing when contemplating a tour company, make sure you read their reviews on TripAdvisor and elsewhere.
If you are interesting in joining the Girls’ Guide To The World Nordic Queens adventure, take a look at the itinerary and package details on the website. Learn more about GG2W, and follow their adventures on Instagram and Facebook.
