Group Tour Companies Seeing Increase in Solo Travelers – The New York Times

After Sheila Katz’s husband died of a degenerative nervous system disorder in April, she knew she had to get away. But her husband 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’d 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 travelers heading to Belize with EF Go Ahead Tours, making friends as she snorkeled, visited Mayan ruins and took chocolate- and tortilla-making classes.

Solo travelers like Ms. Katz are joining guided tours at unprecedented rates, say tour organizers, with some companies reporting single bookings up 300 percent over those from couples, families or clusters of friends. The majority of these lone travelers have never taken a group trip before. After years of planning their own trips and traveling 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 coronavirus. For her trip to Belize, everyone in the group had to be vaccinated, which lifted a proverbial weight from her shoulders.