Solo travel has a reputation problem. People hear “traveling alone” and picture eating dinner by themselves in silence every night. The reality I’ve lived across dozens of solo trips: I meet more people traveling solo than I ever do traveling with friends. When you’re alone, you’re approachable. When you’re in a group, you’re a closed circle. Learning the best ways to meet people while traveling solo is mostly about putting yourself in the right places and being slightly braver than feels natural.
Fair warning: this requires leaving your comfort zone a little. Not a lot — a little. Every technique below is low-stakes and normal. Nobody will think you’re weird. Most travelers are hoping someone talks to them first.
Stay Where Solo Travelers Gather
Accommodation choice is the single biggest factor. Hostels — good ones, not the grim party kind — are engineered for meeting people: communal kitchens, bar areas, organized pub crawls and day trips. Many now offer private rooms, so you don’t have to sleep in a dorm to get the social benefits. Read recent reviews focusing on “social atmosphere” and “common areas.”
Alternatives that work: small group tours (walking tours, food tours, day trips — the shared activity does the ice-breaking for you), co-working spaces for digital nomads (a week pass buys you an instant community), and even well-reviewed Airbnb experiences hosted by locals. What doesn’t work as well: big anonymous hotels and isolated vacation rentals. Nothing wrong with them, but don’t book one and then wonder why you haven’t met anyone.
The Best Ways to Meet People While Traveling Solo
- Take the free walking tour. Every major city has them. Two hours, tip-based, full of other solo travelers and friendly couples. The guide’s bar recommendation afterward is where the real socializing happens.
- Sit at the bar, not a table. At restaurants, the bar seat is the universal signal of “open to conversation.” Bartenders chat, neighboring diners chat. A table for one with your nose in your phone is a force field.
- Join a class or activity. Cooking classes, surf lessons, language exchanges, pub quizzes — doing something together skips all the awkward small talk because you have a built-in topic.
- Use the apps intentionally. Backpacker and travel-buddy apps, plus local event apps like Meetup, can surface gatherings. Even dating apps have “looking for friends/activity partners” modes in many cities.
- Be a regular somewhere. Go to the same café three mornings in a row. Familiarity breeds conversation — with staff and with other regulars.
The Social Skills (They’re Simpler Than You Think)
You need about three openers, and they all work: “Where are you headed next?” (the universal traveler question), “Have you eaten anywhere great around here?” (everyone loves sharing food finds — and it ties into avoiding tourist traps), and “I’m trying to decide between X and Y — any opinion?” (asking advice is flattering and easy to answer). Then listen more than you talk. People remember good listeners far longer than good talkers.
Also, say yes more than usual. The hostel group going to the night market? Yes. The couple inviting you to join their day trip? Yes. Solo travel rewards the yes. You can always retreat to alone time later — and you’ll want to; the rhythm of solo travel is social bursts followed by delicious solitude, and both are the point.
A Note on Safety
Meeting people requires some openness, but keep your street smarts. Meet in public places, don’t share your exact accommodation details with brand-new acquaintances, watch your drinks, and trust your gut — if someone feels off, they probably are. Share your itinerary with someone back home and check in regularly. The State Department’s solo travel resources are worth a read before any big solo trip. Being careful and being open aren’t opposites; they’re the combination that makes solo travel work.
Alone, Not Lonely
The secret nobody tells you: some of the best moments of solo travel are the solitary ones — the sunrise you watched alone, the museum you wandered at your own pace, the dinner where you just thought. Meeting people is wonderful, but don’t treat every quiet moment as a problem to solve. The right weekend getaway city solo can be the perfect low-stakes experiment: two days, no pressure, just you figuring out your own rhythm. You’ll come home with stories, maybe some new friends, and the quiet confidence that you can go anywhere.
The Places Solo Travelers Actually Gather
Every city has unofficial solo-traveler hubs if you know what to look for. Hostel bars with events calendars — pub crawls, trivia nights, group dinners — are the obvious ones, but don’t overlook food halls and markets: communal seating, great food, and a natural excuse to ask the person next to you what they’re eating. Cooking classes and walking tours skew heavily toward solo travelers and friendly couples; the shared activity eliminates the cold-approach problem entirely.
Digital nomad cities (Lisbon, Mexico City, Chiang Mai, Austin) have co-working spaces with social programming — a week pass often includes meetups, skill-shares, and weekend trips. And here’s the counterintuitive one: group fitness classes. A surf lesson, a morning yoga class, a running club meetup — physical activities create instant camaraderie because you’re all slightly out of your comfort zone together. The pattern: look for structured activities with a social component, not just places where people happen to be. Structure does the heavy lifting that courage can’t.
Turning Travel Friends Into Real Friendships
The melancholy truth of solo travel: most travel friendships evaporate at the airport. The ones that last share a pattern — you made a specific plan. “We should hang out sometime” dies; “I’m in Chicago in October, want to grab dinner?” lives. Exchange numbers or socials before you part (everyone means to, nobody does it after), and send one follow-up message within a week: a photo from the trip, an article about the thing you discussed, anything that says “that was real.”
Some travel friendships become genuinely important — the kind where you visit each other’s cities for years. They tend to come from longer shared experiences: multi-day treks, week-long group tours, volunteering stints. If meeting people is a priority, consider building one longer group experience into the trip rather than hoping for magic in 48 hours. And keep a loose “travel friends” list in your phone — city, context, one detail. Future you, planning a trip to their city, will be glad past you bothered. The solo travel safety basics still apply to every new friendship: public first meetings, your own transport, trust your instincts. Open heart, working brain.
