Your Europe. Your rules. A solo travel guide for women.

You have planned the trip. You know which neighbourhoods you want to walk, which restaurants you want to try alone at the bar with a book, which museums are worth the queue. The logistics are sorted.

What takes a little more research is the part nobody talks about openly: feeling genuinely comfortable the whole time. Not just safe in the abstract, but at ease - coming home late, finding your hotel at night, etc.

That is what this guide is for.

6 things that make any city easier to navigate.

It is very unfortunate, but part of travelling as a woman is carrying a small extra layer of awareness that most people never have to think about. That is just honest. And while no guide can change that, the right habits make it feel a lot less like work.

To understand the realities of women's safety while travelling solo, we recently commissioned a European study on the confidence gap in solo female travel - and the findings make plain why the wider hospitality industry needs to take these issues seriously. What came back was clear: safety is not just about the destination. It is about the habits you build and the choices you make before you even arrive.

The bigger truth is that solo travel is genuinely one of the most freeing things you can do. You answer to no one’s itinerary but your own. You eat where you want, stay as long as you like, and leave when you are ready. You come back more confident, more independent, and with a better sense of what you truly enjoy. These tips are not there to make you anxious. They are there, so nothing gets in the way of that.

1. Keep your travel plans off your public feed.
   Do not announce your hotel while you are still staying there. Do not post “currently in Barcelona” in real time if your account is public. Your online audience, including people you do not know, does not need to know where you are sleeping tonight. Instead, share the highlights after the fact or keep location-specific posts for close friends only while you are away.
2. Do not broadcast that you are travelling alone.
   You do not owe strangers that information. If someone asks, a vague answer works fine. “My friends are meeting me later” is perfectly reasonable. This is not about paranoia; it is about not making yourself an obvious target for the wrong kind of attention.
3. Keep your people in the loop.
   Share your itinerary with someone at home. A friend, a family member, anyone who would notice if they did not hear from you. A quick daily check-in message does not take long and gives both of you peace of mind. Drop a pin or share your accommodation details before you arrive somewhere new.
4. Stay connected.
   A local SIM or data plan is one of the most practical investments you can make for a solo trip. Being able to pull up Google Maps, book a ride, or message someone in real time is not a luxury, it is a baseline. Make sure your phone is charged before you head out for the evening, and know the local emergency number for wherever you are.
5. Use a crossbody bag, and keep it in front of you.
   This is the advice every seasoned solo traveller gives, and it holds up. A crossbody bag with a zip that sits at the front of your body is significantly harder to pick than a backpack or shoulder bag. In busy tourist areas across Europe: markets, metro stations, crowded squares, this is the single most useful anti-pickpocket habit you can have.
6. For evenings out, lean into group energy.
   Enjoying the nightlife solo is completely doable, and often how you end up meeting the most interesting people. Stick to well-lit, busy streets and avoid cutting through quieter areas on your way home. For evening outings, group tours and meet-up activities are worth considering: guided city nightlife tours, concerts, shows, or local events where the social side is built in. You tend to meet people you want to spend more time with.

Some accommodation is designed specifically for this. Spaces with regular events like rooftop evenings, community dinners, or local cultural moments definitely make it easy to show up alone and leave with plans. We run a programme of events across our hubs throughout the year, open to guests and locals.

Cities that feel good to travel solo. 

Where you go matters as much as how you plan. Some cities are simply better set up for solo female travel: walkable, well-lit, easy to navigate, with a social scene that does not require a group to enjoy. Amsterdam is one of the strongest examples - compact and flat, with a café culture that makes solo dining feel natural, reliable public transport after dark, and one of the highest rates of women reporting they felt at ease, according to the same study. Barcelona works in a different way: its density, late culture, and streets that stay busy well into the evening mean you are rarely the only person around; just stay switched on in tourist-heavy areas, where pickpocketing is the more realistic risk. Vienna brings a warmth that makes solo travel feel genuinely welcoming rather than just manageable, with strong local café scenes that cater naturally to people exploring on their own.

A note on cities we have not listed here

Every city in Europe has areas where you will feel completely at ease and areas that warrant more awareness. The cities above consistently score well across the factors that matter for solo female travellers: walkability, public transport, good lighting, and a social scene that is easy to enter alone.

For some destinations, particularly where our survey showed higher levels of concern among female travellers, we have written more specifically about how to navigate them well. Those guides go into neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood detail that a single section here cannot do justice to. The risk is not a reason to avoid a city; it is a reason to do the research first, and our city guides for solo travel in Europe are a good place to start.

What to actually look for when you book

The hotel you choose shapes a lot of your experience, especially as a solo traveller. Not just the room, but who is at the desk at 11pm, how the entrance feels when you are coming back late, whether there is somewhere comfortable to sit without a reason.

These are the factors that come up most consistently in the research.

24/7 staffed front desk
The finding that stood out most from the same research: 51% of women named round-the-clock staff presence as a top priority. Not a key box on a wall. An actual person. Knowing you can walk in at any hour and have someone there changes how a late evening feels, whether you are returning from a night out or just getting back from a long travel day.

Lighting and layout
Entrances, corridors and parking areas, 44% of women in our research flagged this as a key comfort factor, and it rarely comes up in hotel descriptions. It is worth checking before you book: a quick Google Street View of the entrance, or a walk from the nearest transport stop, tells you more than most listing photos will. It is a baseline, not a bonus - and something we, along with the wider hospitality industry, are still working to get right.

On-site amenities: the case for staying in
Having a bar, a restaurant, a gym and communal spaces inside your accommodation changes how much the outside world has to cooperate with your mood. On the evenings when you want a drink without the effort of going out, when the weather does not cooperate, when you just want to sit somewhere comfortable that is not your room, on-site amenities are the thing that makes that possible.

It also means your hotel can function as a social base rather than just a place to sleep. Communal spaces designed for mixing: lobbies, rooftop bars, shared kitchen areas let you meet other travellers on your own terms, without the pressure of a planned social activity.