Futurist and Globetrender founder Jenny Southan explores how solo travel looked in the analogue era and how the next quarter century will reshape the experience.
My mum cried as she waved me off on the Eurostar to Paris. It was my first solo trip. I was 19. It was 2001. I had a copy of the Lonely Planet Guide to Europe – weighing at least a kilogram – stashed in my Lowe Alpine rucksack. But it was worth its weight in gold. Like most solo travellers at the turn of the millennium – without smartphones, apps or regular internet access – this would prove to be my most valuable asset.
Before I departed, I scoured its dense columns for places to stay and earmarked my first hostel. I didn’t book it in advance (which usually required an international phone call), so I simply took a chance on availability. Compared to today’s instant reservations and verified reviews, this was a wildly ad-hoc approach that sometimes left me wandering unfamiliar streets for hours in search of a bed.
Once secured, each morning I would collect a paper map from reception and set off on foot, excited by the blank canvas of the day ahead. I spent almost a week walking every street in Paris – until I felt I’d truly covered it.
My wanderings often took me through less-than-salubrious districts – Pigalle’s red-light district or the backstreets near Gare du Nord. It was slow and occasionally uncomfortable, but it gave me time to think, observe and make discoveries that weren’t algorithmically suggested. In today’s world of instant e-bikes and ride-hailing apps, it’s easy to forget how much intimacy comes from navigating a city at walking pace, free from the rigidity of Google Maps to stand in the way of our purposeless wandering.
Seeking solo-travel connections
Nostalgia isn’t always rosy, of course. I often felt lonely when solo travelling at 19 in the early 2000s. Seeking out connections in restaurants and bars wasn’t an expense I could justify at the time. So instead I chose the solace of art galleries, where I would linger for hours, encountering Picasso’s Guernica or a Flemish still life by Peter Claesz, which felt like discovering treasure.
Today, museums still act as safe havens for solo travellers, but the challenge of filling your day has largely disappeared. There are now countless inexpensive excursions, free walking tours and social platforms for meeting fellow travellers – even a growing trend for joining small-group tours as a solo traveller, whether for an activity-packed day or longer stint.
Back then, you had to build the confidence to strike up conversations with strangers; now there are innumerable apps and initiatives to make connecting with people as easy as possible.
To counteract moments of isolation, I would also use internet cafes; a failsafe sanctuary where I’d read and send emails, and when I later moved to Tokyo, update my Blogspot or browse a strange new social media site called Facebook.
I don’t remember doing much online research on those early trips, unlike today – when you can preview almost every destination in detail before booking and there’s very little mystery left. Now, even Antarctica can feel familiar after endless social media clips of penguins and polar plunges. Instead, from these ubiquitous sanctuaries, I’d email updates: ‘I hitched a ride on a tour bus with a band!’ or, more worryingly, ‘Someone stole my money – please help.’
Though I left my Nokia 3310 at home because roaming wasn’t affordable, I still prided myself on staying in touch with my parents. As well as emails, I bought scratch phone cards and called them from payphones, revealing silver panels to access a string of numbers and a finite number of minutes.
But it wasn’t just about communing with others. Churches also revealed themselves as a place to reconnect with myself – somewhere to sit quietly and write in my paper diary. I still have those handwritten logs: tens of thousands of words read by no one but me. A strange rarity compared with today’s social media age where now we post everything to everyone – and connections seem endless.
Read more: How to shift your solo-dining habits
The practicalities of analogue solo travel
Without a ready-made community or support network, travelling alone back then required real resilience and problem-solving skills. On one occasion – after said money was stolen – my parents wired me cash via Western Union because there was no online banking. Fees consumed a notable portion of the transfer and collecting it required a labourious visit to a physical branch in Barcelona.
Accessing emergency funds was slow and stressful, too. I recall that in Tokyo in 2004, many ATMs shut at weekends – so if you hadn’t withdrawn cash on Friday, you could find yourself stranded. You had to be wily and think ahead, compared to today when financial access is near-instantaneous, borderless and largely invisible.
Typically, as I travelled from place to place then, I wore a money belt lined with thin packets of cash and travellers’ cheques beneath my T-shirt. Although debit and credit cards existed, cash was still the dominant form of payment and travellers’ cheques – issued in major currencies and exchanged at a bank for local currency – were considered the safest way of accessing money. I slept in that money belt every night, fearful that someone might rifle through my luggage.
But amid all the real or imagined accidents of analogue travel, there was the chance for happy accidents too. Often, I think what feels most diminished about today’s way of travelling is serendipity. Back then, I loved how chance delivered unexpected gifts: finding warmth and falafel on a cold Amsterdam night; discovering a discarded copy of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin in a Prague dorm; making friends with a Canadian hockey player on a train to Milan while feeling homesick. I learnt to trust that for every obstacle, something unexpected would emerge.
Read more: Jessica Nabongo on taking the risk with solo travel
Solo travel in the year 2050
In 2026, I look back at that 19-year-old with admiration. In the years since, that resilient foundation has allowed me to become a professional travel writer and founder of Globetrender, a trend-forecasting agency and online magazine dedicated to the future of travel. As a futurist, it’s my job to speculate about where we’re heading next.
So, what will the next 25 years look like? I anticipate that solo travel will perhaps become more purposeful – centred on learning, wellness or spiritual development, rather than escape. Trips may be slower and longer, replacing the frenetic hopping of my past adventures with extended stays. The same freedom will remain, but its tempo will change.
There are also limits to the current rate of optimisation. Once booking is frictionless, navigation flawless, translation instantaneous and risk minimised, efficiency plateaus. Beyond that apex, the opportunity shifts – from making travel faster to making it deeper and more meaningful.
Nostalgia acts as a counterbalance to relentless acceleration. By reviving analogue rituals such as deliberate disconnection or revisiting childhood destinations, we soften the vertigo of progress.
In the next quarter century, artificial intelligence will also transform travel – and solo travel with it – from biometric passports to AI concierges building hyper-personalised itineraries, satellite networks such as Starlink promising connectivity across land, sea and sky, and service robots handling logistics in hotels and airports, freeing humans from labour. AI companions could also accompany solo travellers virtually – or even replace physical companionship – reshaping what ‘alone’ means.
And yet, no matter how advanced the tools, our fundamental needs will remain unchanged. We will still require shelter, nourishment and human connection, whether through one-off encounters or longer, more in-depth interactions while on the road. Even if virtual reality allows us to explore distant landscapes from our living rooms, embodied experience – the taste of a peach from an Italian market stall, dancing in a distant bar – cannot be digitised.
In 2001, solo travel meant freedom and opportunity, yes, but also uncertainty and disconnection. In 2026, it still means autonomy, but also constant connectivity, because we’re now so reliant on digital tools to solve our problems. In 2051, my hope is that we will reach a balance, consciously choosing the best of both worlds; when to plug in and when to step away. Because however far technology takes us, nothing replaces the analogue thrill of setting off somewhere new – guided less by algorithm and more by a sense of adventure.
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