Featured image: JourneyWoman is curating a Solo Travel Concierge Service to help women get started in solo travel| Photo by drazenphoto on Envato

Curated, personalized approach is designed to help women get started in solo travel

To help more women to travel solo with confidence, JourneyWoman has launched a ‘Solo Travel Concierge’ service as part of its Women’s Travel Directory to facilitate access with trusted resources, including travel advisors, local guides, custom trip companies, recommended places to stay, local day trips and travel coaches.

“With the increasing complexity and cost of travel, we want to provide women with a more personalized way to help them plan and book their solo travels,” says Carolyn Ray, CEO, JourneyWoman  “We’ve curated partners to help both the first-time solo traveller and experienced travellers, with a focus on types of travel our solo women have told us are most compelling to them, both in terms of travel experiences and lesser-known destinations.”

To use the concierge service, women complete an online form and JourneyWoman will match inquiries with the right specialist. The service offered at no charge for women. During the pilot phase, JourneyWoman has curated partnerships with three travel advisors and six custom trip companies that are existing members of its Women’s Travel Directory. In addition, women can connect directly with Greether and the Travel Coach Network for verified guides and coaches, respectively. JourneyWoman has also folded its ‘Places to Stay’ resource, which was created in 2023 to help women find and share recommended women-friendly hotels, hostels and other accommodation options. There are also links to local day trips so support cultural immersion with EatWith and Devour, among others. 

JourneyWoman’s recent Women’s Solo Travel Study conducted in November 2024 showed strong interest for this new service. In the research, 60% of women said they would be interested in connecting with travel advisors, with 37% looking for a local guide or host and 32% seeking customized trips. During the pilot period, key partners in the Concierge service include vetted companies that are part of JourneyWoman’s Women’s Travel Directory. Interested partners can apply here to be considered for 2025. 

Concierge Service: Trusted Travel Advisors

In its pilot phase, the Solo Travel Concierge service will connect solo women with vetted and established travel advisors with deep experience in their areas of specialty. Travel advisors will assist with creating itineraries, recommending companies that provide no single supplement and/or reduced pricing and booking travel. Fees for these services will be negotiated directly with the advisors.

Initially, three specialities will be offered, with more to follow:

• South America: Rebecca Braak, Rebecca Adventure Travel. Founded in 2007, Rebecca Adventure Travel is B Corp certified and specializes in Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, and the Galapagos Islands, with a focus on responsible tourism.
• River Cruising and Small Ship Ocean Cruising: Trish York of Trish York Travel. Established in 2014, Trish York specializes in offering curated journeys that combine personalized service with exceptional attention to detail. From bustling cityscapes to sun-soaked beaches or scenic mountain retreats, we’ll partner with you to craft the perfect itinerary.
• Polar Expeditions: Thomas Lennartz of The Polar Adventure Company. With over 50 years of combined polar expertise, the Polar Adventure Company providesin-depth first-hand knowledge of the Arctic and Antarctic regions, alongside real-time pricing and availability for over 1,700 itineraries from more than 30 operators.

JourneyWoman hopes to grow the travel advisor network and welcomes applications here from interested travel advisors.

Concierge Service: Local Guides in partnership with Greether

In December, JourneyWoman announced a partnership with Greether to provide women with verified local guides. Greeters are a mix of a friend, tour guide, and concierge, providing companionship and personalized tours. Greether connects women travellers with local verified female guides, or “Greeters”, on the ground in more than 100 countries around the world.

‘Both Greether and JourneyWoman share a commitment to empowering women in travel, prioritizing safety, social impact, purpose, and authentic experiences,” says Vanessa Karel, CEO and Founder, Greether. “This partnership represents a step forward in promoting responsible tourism, supporting local women and inspiring female travelers to explore the world confidently.”

Greether is an award-winning travel company with a mission to help women travel safer by connecting female identified travelers with verified, local women Greeters, who can be booked to explore destinations. With a fast-growing community spanning over 100 countries and 1,000+ cities, Greether has established itself as a go-to platform for adventurous women worldwide. Greether also invites women passionate about their hometowns to apply to become guides here. 

Concierge Service: Custom Trip companies

For women who want to design their own travel with the assistance of an expert on the ground, JourneyWoman has curated a list of trusted partners specializing in unique travel experiences. Initial custom trip partners include:

• Safaris: Intent for Safari was founded by Laura and Colin Simpson in 2020, and offers luxury safaris to Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Ethiopia.
• Walking holidays: WalkingWomen has a strong legacy spanning more than 20 years. It has been owned and operated by sister duo Ginny Lunn and Sara Pease-Watkins since 2021, who received the 2024 JourneyWoman Entrepreneur Award.
• Conservation and Wildlife: Blue Sky Expeditions was founded by Carla Geyser in 2019 as a follow-on of the conservation, environmental and humanitarian work that Blue Sky Society Trust has done since 2012. 
• Ireland and Scotland: Brendan Vacations is the Celtic travel experts, offering self-guided trips and itineraries to guided tours that are planned, managed and personally delivered by passionate, fun-loving locals behind the blue door in Dublin, Ireland. 
• India: India for Beginners was founded by award-winning travel blogger Mariellen Ward, publisher of Breathedreamgo.com. The company is a partnership between Mariellen, who knows what it’s like to travel as a foreign woman in India, and a Delhi-based travel company with many years of knowledge and experience.

JourneyWoman hopes to grow the custom trips service and welcomes applications here from interested companies.

Concierge Service: Travel Coaching with The Travel Coach Network

Founded by Sahara Rose in 2019, this community of Certified Travel Coaches helps travellers set intentions for their trips and use travel as a tool to reach personal and professional goals. It also provides women who have a deep passion and experience in travel to help others find their way in an increasingly complex and sometimes overwhelming sea of travel choices.

Unlike travel advisors, travel coaches do not focus on the booking phase of a trip. Instead, the focus is on  transformation, healing, self-development and reaching new goals.

“Travel coaches focus on putting the power back into the hands of the traveller by setting specific intentions first, and then choosing the destination,” founder Sahara Rose says. “Every time that we travel, it’s for a different reason and we are a different persona. Travel Coaches are the experts who guide you through the entire travel experience from inspiration to the post-trip phase.”

To find a travel coach, click here. Certified travel coaches are invited to apply here. 

Read more and watch our webinar with The Travel Coach Network here. 

Find and Recommend Places to Stay

Our readers have told us that their top need when planning travel is finding a safe place to stay. To respond to that need, we built a resource for women to share and recommend accommodations, which is free to use, in service to women. 

We know from our research that women prefer smaller places to stay, including hostels, monasteries, bed and breakfasts and boutique hotels. Through this service, women can recommend a place to stay and search by type of accommodation, cost, city and country. You can highlight women-owned, Indigenous-owned and Black-owned accommodations.  This also includes recommended hospitality exchanges, housesitting, and volunteering. so we have also included services like Trusted Housesitters, Friendship Force, and Servas. We are proud to partner with two companies offering accessible accommodations, AccessibleGO and Wheel the World.

About JourneyWoman 

Founded in 1994, JourneyWoman™ is the world’s first solo female travel resource and one of the most trusted women’s travel brands in the world. JourneyWoman hosts the world’s largest ​Women’s Travel Directory as a free service to women, providing hundreds of curated and vetted women-friendly tours, retreats, small ships and safe places to stay while supporting small tourism businesses around the world. To elevate women’s voices, the award-winning ​Soul of Travel Podcast​ joined JourneyWoman in 2023. JourneyWoman also launched the travel industry’s first ​Women’s Speaker’s Bureau​ to share wisdom from women over 50 and accelerate diversity and the JourneyWoman Awards for Women Over 50. To learn more, visit ​Facebook​, ​Instagram​, or ​LinkedIn​. JourneyWoman is a registered trademark of Journeywoman Enterprises Inc.

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