Travelling Safely as a Solo Female Traveller.

Abstract:

This paper discusses the dangers and risks that solo female travellers may face when travelling. There will be examples of popular destinations in regards to solo female travelling, as well as examples of destinations that only experienced female travellers may enjoy.

Key Words:
Solo, Female, Traveller, Risks, Dangers.

Main Body:
When it comes to travelling, regardless of age, gender or ethnicity, it is always vital to research a destination and the culture before travelling there. There are many reasons as to why beforehand research is important, for solo female travellers, the key things to think about and find out is how welcoming a country/culture is to females. As well as this, crime rates should be looked into- this is because tourists will usually be seen as easy targets due to the tourist not knowing the area or the way locals are. Not only this but stereotypically females are seen as weaker than males, and when travelling alone, are seen as prime targets for petty crimes or worse.

Over recent years, solo female travelling has become increasingly more popular, this can be thanks to the amount of tour companies that offer female only tours. Travel companies dedicated to women-only customers have hugely increased by over 200% over the past few years.

Iceland and Switzerland are two of the ‘happiest’ countries in the world, with the laid back and welcoming culture of both these countries, these are valuable qualities a lot of solo female travellers will look for when deciding where to travel to as first time travellers. Honourable mentions go to Canada for the friendly locals as well as Finland for low crime rate.

There can be an arguing point here about how a lot of countries are safe for travellers, if you find the right accommodation and research the surroundings and culture. It can almost be a game of luck as to whether a female solo traveller may be ‘targeted’ or not. Not only this but with the world moving ‘forward’, the stigma that females should not travel alone should not exist, with the amount of females who are taking up such travels, only a handful have reported problems because of it. Independent women travellers, are women who have the time, money, and desire to embark upon a journey that takes them away from familiar surroundings’, while disputing the findings of other research that depicts this group as unadventurous, even timid. (B, Pridaeux).

One case that reactivated discussion about whether females should travel solo, this incident happened in March 2016, when two Argentinian female backpackers were killed in Ecuador on a backpacking trip- these women ran out of money, when two locals offered the females help, the next day the two ladies were found dead.

It is important for businesses to take into account issues such as sexual harassment. Examples of businesses that have handled these issues well, are an Indian airline, this airline received multiple complaints of sexual assault, the airlines response was to add female only seating in Economy Class, this response deemed quite popular with its flyers.
A few years ago a Hilton Hotel in London, introduced a female only floor, with private check in and female only staff for room service and housekeeping, many of the female guests declined this new service Hilton offered, therefore Hilton scrapped the idea completely. This may have seemed like a solution however there are various reasons as to why this could have backfired; the first being that these females may start to feel isolated and lonely with the private check in and secure floor, but more importantly, having an all female floor could be taken the wrong way as it would be known that these females are travelling solo- not to mention all together on the same floor, so it would be easy to find where the females are going/staying.

References:
B, Pridaeux. K, Elizabeth McNamara. 2010. A Typology of Solo Independent Women Travellers
Fearis, B. 2009. Ladies First? Buying Business Travel, 41.
Junek, O., Binney, W. & Winn, S. 2006. All-female travel: What do women really want? Tourism: An International Interdisciplinary Journal, 54, 1.

I have chosen to leave a commentary on this paper due to the similarities to my own conference topic, therefore, I am interested to understand the authors viewpoints in comparison to mine.

This paper was an interesting read, with a solid focus on experiences in deterrents businesses have tried, both popular and unpopular with solo female travellers at The Hilton Hotel and an Indian Airline which Westwood et al, (2000) could have been a valued study to include as she discovered travelling businesswomen had higher concern levels towards their physical safety in comparison to their male counter partners, especially alone in isolated areas and after dark. The author carried a well validated point as to why the Hilton Hotel method may not have worked, by females feeling isolated and it being known that all the females are travelling solo on the same floor, suggesting it could be easy to locate these women if someone had motives to harm.

This paper successfully outlines and addresses different views of travelling safely as a solo female, with a strong suggestion to research destinations and crime statistics as suggested by Klenosky, (2002) that it offers contributions towards destination image and level of satisfaction in the traveller by building knowledge. The author states
‘only a handful have reported problems’ experienced when travelling solo, which could have been explored more thoroughly through researching Khoo-Lattimore and Wilson, (2017) exploring the fact there no solid statistics due to non-reporting, data suppression or protecting the destinations image to other tourists by not being publicised.

A semi-structured interview could have been a welcomed addition to the paper to provide personal, real-life perspectives to the topic of Travelling Safely as a Solo Female Traveller, although it could be argued the author did not need a semi-structured interview as they discussed a case study in Ecuador, however this is not referenced and has limited information. I believe this paper was well-researched by the author, with well a displayed understanding of the topic and importance of safety for solo female travellers through good references.

References:
Klenosky, D. (2002). The “Pull” of Tourism Destinations: A Means-End Investigation. Journal of Travel Research, 40(4), pp.385–395.

Westwood, S., Pritchard, A. and Morgan, N.J. (2000). Gender-blind marketing: businesswomen’s perceptions of airline services. Tourism Management, 21(4), pp.353–362.

I chose to comment on this paper because of its relevance to my travel experience. Moreover, this topic is a topic that I have never thought about based on my travel experience.
According to the text, solo female travellers should also be investigated for their culture, risks and crime rates. This is because travellers who are unfamiliar with the culture of the country are highly likely to be targeted for crime when travelling alone.
The examples presented in this paper by the London branch Hilton Hotel and the airline were very interesting. Because it was a new idea for me that large companies were considering the way in which they were treating the growing number of single female travellers and trying to provide them with safety. If I could add a little more to the topic of this paper, it would be interesting to learn about solo female Asian travellers as one of them. According to Seow and Brown (2017)'s paper, which investigated in-depth interviews exploring the travel motives and experiences of female visitors in Asia, defying sociocultural expectations at the time of their trip was an important factor and restrictions such as unwanted attention and harassment from men. They also argued that the physical characteristics of Asians further increase the vulnerability of women (Seow and Brown, 2017). Related to the topic of this paper, Seow and Brown (2017) also discuss the issue of safety related to men who travel alone in Asia and the issue of travelling alone at night. However, here I personally question whether there are so many differences between women travelling abroad alone and men travelling solo. Travellers who seem to be alone and unfamiliar with the culture in all travel destinations are likely to be targeted for crime regardless of gender. In addition, I somewhat agree that unwanted male interests and racial concerns are the difficulties faced by female travellers in Asia alone, however, I think this can happen to all women except for the word "race", and it is natural for men travelling alone to increase the risk of travelling during the night.
The author of this paper used good references to understand the importance of the safety and risk of female visitors travelling alone, and I personally think it was a very good paper because it gave me more consideration when travelling in the future.
Reference:
Seow D. and Brown L. (2017) The solo female Asian tourist. Current Issues in Tourism. 21(10), pp. 1187-1206. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1080/13683500.2017.1423283 [accessed on 10 June 2021].