This was a "solo travelling" summer A new way of travelling that is completely changing the tourism industry

Solo travelling has established itself in recent years as an increasingly popular way to plan one's holidays. Travelling alone means, above all, having greater freedom: independently choosing your destination, deciding how long to stay in a place, changing your itinerary along the way and, more generally, building the trip at your own pace. This form of tourism, precisely because of its flexibility, comes with different needs compared to those of people travelling as a couple or in a group.

Among these, one of the most important concerns the perception of safety at the destination. This is a concept that is not solely about crime rates, but also encompasses far more practical aspects of day-to-day travel: the quality of road infrastructure, the efficiency of public transport, access to healthcare, and the ability to connect to the Internet easily. All factors that can carry greater weight when you are managing a trip entirely on your own.

What are the safest destinations for solo travelling?

It is on the basis of these criteria that a recent study conducted by travel agency Private Portugal has attempted to rank the European destinations generally considered safest for solo travellers. In recent years, a growing number of organisations of this kind have been publishing reports on industry trends, also and especially from a marketing perspective, and in this case the ranking takes into account numerous variables related not only to safety in the strict sense, but more broadly to the ease with which it is possible to get around and travel within a country.

At the top of the ranking is Finland, followed by Monaco and Austria; further down we find the Netherlands and Denmark. Among the top ten positions we also find Estonia, Slovenia, Switzerland and Lithuania, while the lower positions in the ranking are occupied mainly by Eastern European countries, including Ukraine.

Travelling alone also means being able to improvise

The perception of safety, of course, is not the only factor that influences the choices of solo travellers. One of the defining features of this type of holiday is precisely the ability to have greater freedom in modifying plans and itineraries along the way. At the same time, however, the popularity of tourist destinations often follows a cyclical pattern, increasingly driven by content published on social platforms: in recent years, for example, Japan has been one of the most popular destinations, as have Iceland and Albania in Europe.

One of the consequences of the dynamics underpinning social media is precisely the increase in tourist pressure on a handful of specific locations, which end up being flooded with large numbers of people. Among the knock-on effects of this trend is the fact that it has become more difficult to plan a day-by-day trip: many experiences that until a few years ago were accessible at any time now need to be booked well in advance.

All of this ends up limiting those moments of improvisation that often make a holiday more enjoyable and memorable. This is a change that affects all tourists, but one that can be particularly at odds with the needs of those who travel alone, precisely because they are generally freer to modify their plans and itineraries along the way.