With the age of self-discovery, self-love and solo adventures taking centre stage in recent years, there has been a noticeable surge in independent travel across the globe. Gone are the days of painstakingly finding travel dates that suit the entire group.
Image: Remi Kloos/ Getaway Gallery
More and more people are preferring to spend some time on Google researching solo-friendly travel destinations, packing their bags and heading out on their own to explore the world.
According to UK-based adventure tour operator Explore!, TikTok videos alone with the hashtag #solotravel have garnered over 3.7 billion views.
So with many people clearly heading online in search of solo travel inspiration, the tour company decided to analyse 24 months’ worth of Google data to determine which places around the world are gaining popularity for solo explorers in 2023.
Divided into continents, Cape Town came out as the second in the list of the top five locations for solo travellers in Africa, losing by a whisker to Mauritius, which took the top spot.
Mauritius had a 147% interest increase, based on data representing a 12-month period of Google solo travel searches, while Cape Town saw a 144% interest increase.
Cairo secured third place with 108% followed by Seychelles in fourth with 45% and Nairobi taking fifth place.
Take a look:
After compiling a comprehensive list of over 580 destinations around the world, each destination was then analysed in Google Keyword Planner with + [solo travel] to find the total accumulative number of Google searches made worldwide between April 2022 and March 2023.
These results were then compared with the total accumulative number of Google searches made worldwide in the previous 12 months (April 2021 to March 2022).
The difference in annual search totals per destination was calculated to see which destinations had the highest percentage jump in search volume interest.
Written by Tauhira Ajam
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