Alone, Not Lonely: What Solo Travel Taught Me About Hospitality

Nov 6, 2026 Masuduzzaman Kamrul All Insights

Solo traveller · Storyteller · AI researcher · Tech enthusiast

Kyungsung University · Busan Global Hospitality Management

I have stood alone in front of the Blue Mosque in Istanbul with a camera bag and nowhere I had to be. I have walked toward the Eiffel Tower in Paris on my own clock, watched London glow around Big Ben and the Eye, paused under Milan’s Duomo, looked out over Hong Kong from a plane wing, wandered hills in Sikkim, visited Tripura, and come home to Busan’s shoreline—the city where I now study Global Hospitality Management at Kyungsung University.

Those days are not a survey. They are simply my life as a travel enthusiast, a Bangladeshi student in Korea. And they keep asking me the same hospitality question:

What happens when the guest arrives as one—and the system still thinks in twos?

That question became a research preprint I wrote for ResearchGate and for anyone in tourism who is tired of treating solo travellers as a niche footnote. The full paper is a literature review and conceptual synthesis—honest about scope, careful with sources, and clear that I did not invent interview quotes or survey numbers. You can read it here: Alone, Not Lonely (full paper PDF).

Solo travel is a choice more often than a compromise

In the academic literature, scholars keep finding something I recognised immediately: many people travel alone because they want to, not because nobody else was free. Freedom, flexibility, self-discovery, and the chance to meet the destination—and sometimes strangers—on your own terms show up again and again (Bianchi, 2016; Yang, 2021).

Push–pull motivation theory helps explain the shape of that desire. We are pushed by internal needs—escape, curiosity, growth—and pulled by places that promise novelty and meaning (Dann, 1977; Crompton, 1979). When you remove the constant negotiation of a travel companion, those motives sharpen. The day becomes yours. You choose the café. You stay for golden hour. You leave when the feeling is done.

That does not mean solo travel is lonely. Privacy and isolation are different things. You can want full control of the itinerary and still hope for a warm conversation at dinner. In fact, some of the best travel conversations I have had started because I was alone—and therefore open.

Risk is real—and uneven

Here is where honesty matters. The research on solo female travellers—especially Asian women—is clear that tourist space is still gendered. Fear, conspicuousness, harassment, and social judgment shape routes, clothing, timing, and even whether someone books the trip at all (Wilson & Little, 2008; Yang, Khoo-Lattimore, & Arcodia, 2018; Seow & Brown, 2018). Work on Bangladeshi female solo travellers shows how family support, time, perceived risk, and cultural values intertwine with the decision to go (Bernard, Rahman, & McGehee, 2022).

As a male traveller, I do not pretend my risk map matches theirs. What I can say, as a hospitality student reading that literature beside my own journeys, is this: if your hotel corridor, restaurant script, or taxi partnership ignores psychological safety, you are not “premium”—you are incomplete. Safety is not only locks and cameras. It is dignity. It is being believed. It is not having to perform confidence for staff who treat solitude as suspicious.

Technology sits in the middle of this story too. Maps, reviews, travel groups, and messaging apps have become soft infrastructure for solo travellers—ways to negotiate uncertainty and stay connected to family while still claiming independence (Karagöz et al., 2021). Online communities matter especially where solo travel still carries social stigma. But apps cannot replace a well-lit corridor or a respectful front desk.

Hospitality still designs for the imaginary couple

Ask a solo guest about single supplements, the awkward “Just one?”, or the table that makes dining alone feel like a public apology. The scholarship and the lived experience rhyme. Bianchi (2016) pointed to safety and unfriendly service as major sources of dissatisfaction. Brown, Buhalis, and Beer (2020) went further on restaurants, arguing for two complementary ideas: Go Solo (make solo dining feel legitimate) and Go Plural (offer communal options for people who want connection without arriving with a companion).

That is the managerial heart of my paper—four practical commitments hospitality teams can actually act on:

1. Fairness — price and communicate solo stays without treating one guest as a broken double.
2. Safety — design light, staff response, and information as seriously as you design pillows.
3. Choice — autonomy plus optional belonging; never force either.
4. Cultural literacy — especially for Asian and South Asian outbound travellers whose trips often begin as family conversations, not only individual whims.

If you run a hotel in Busan, a café in Bangkok, or a destination brand dreaming about the next wave of independent travellers from South Asia, those four lines are not “nice to have.” They are how solo guests decide whether they felt welcomed—or merely tolerated.

Why I wrote this from Busan

I am building ideas, exploring the world with a camera and a notebook, and creating opportunities. Solo and independent travel sits at the intersection of all three. Mobility is not only flights and hotels; it is confidence, dignity, and the feeling that a destination expected you.

Writing the paper as a reflective synthesis—rather than pretending I ran a large survey I did not run—felt like the honest move for an early-career hospitality student. The literature is rich enough. The gap is often translation: turning careful research into language managers and travellers can use on Monday morning.

If you work in hotels, restaurants, DMOs, or tourism education—or if you are simply planning your first trip alone—I hope the full paper gives you a clearer map than vibes alone. And if you are a student from Bangladesh or elsewhere in South Asia wondering whether your travel questions belong in academic conversation: they do. Pack lightly. Ask better questions. Build the kind of hospitality you wish you had found on the road.