New horizons Attractions of a holiday with strangers
It’s the height of family getaway season, but fun-seeking high-flyers are going on holiday with strangers. Anna Hart reports
Summer holiday season is well and truly upon us – but what do you do when your friends are coupled up and are looking at package trips for their family of four, and you’re left to see the world solo? That was the predicament Lee Thompson, a photojournalist, faced when he hit his thirties, and was suddenly confronted with the “real hassle” of trying to go away with friends. “They were all settling down and starting families, so my travel companions started to peel off,” he says.
Around the same time, he met his eventual co-founder, Radha Vyas, a financial consultant, who was facing the same issue. “We realised there was a huge gap in the market for 30and 40-somethings wanting to break out of their comfort zones and explore the world together. Professional, urban and single people like us were everywhere – but they were completely unseen by the industry.”
Group trips for those above student age were still limited in 2014, Thompson recalls, with “most tour operators appealing to 20-something hedonists or retired couples in their sixties. There was nothing for anyone in between. And either way, they tended to follow the same bland itineraries that did nothing to get under the skin of a place.” And so the Flash Pack was born, offering well-curated four-figure tours that really do deliver on adventure, cultural immersion, and – crucially – similarly-minded travel companions for City high-flyers and creative young professionals.
Paul Gray, 43, runs his own wealth management practice and lives in south-west London, and travels for at least eight weeks of the year. He took his first Flash Pack trip in May, to Bali, and is set to travel with them again to Peru this month. “My biggest barriers to booking a group trip was the worry that I’d find myself stuck with people I had nothing in common with, or that I’d be stuck on an itinerary that didn’t work for me,” he says.
“I’m single and fiercely independent – I live alone and run my own business – but I booked the Bali trip because the Flash Pack seemed to take the hassle out of an adventure. I didn’t want to spend hours at a screen researching different options, so this is a trade-off between travelling with independence and autonomy, but also embarking on a trip that is formatted for you – and social.” Traditionally, travel aficionados have turned up their noses at group travel; there was a sense that “real travellers” go it alone, that group trips were a cop-out. And, in our social media-saturated world where we display our travel savviness and cultural cred pixel by pixel, organised tours seemed to offer very little in the way of travel bragging rights. Yet this is changing: an increasing number of firms are popping up to cater to the midlife solo travel market, such as Faraway, a travel company set up to help busy would-be travellers. Its first group trip, to Malawi, incorporates an overnight stay in huts on Mount Mulanje, a safari, nights on castaway islands and the Lake of Stars festival on the shores of Lake Malawi.
This boom in 40-something pack travel can partly be explained by the trend for solo adventures. According to Abta’s annual Holiday Habits survey, one in nine holidaymakers took a holiday on their own in the previous 12 months, double the number compared with six years ago. Travelzoo, the deal site, recently found that more than three quarters of Brits have travelled solo or plan to in the future – and it’s not just a plan B for singles struggling to find a travel buddy. Its July survey found that 60 per cent of people who travel alone are in a relationship or married, but still want to head out on their own.
For Gray, the itineraries these kinds of trips produce “genuinely offer standout memorable moments, that manage to satiate quite precious, demanding young professionals” – far from the image of “matching caps and singing Kumbaya together”, as Thompson’s friends and family joked when he first suggested the idea of setting up a grown-up group trip offering. “When you travel with us, you experience a lot of the perks of solo travel – meeting new people, head space, building resilience – within the structure of a group format, with that added layer of moral support,” he adds.
“But you still get to escape the expectations of people who know you; you can be who you want to be, within a group of strangers. So, it’s like a stepping stone to actual solo travel.”
Sifting through Tripadvisor reviews, scrolling through Instagram shots
‘Sixty per cent of solo travellers are in a relationship or are married’
of boutique hotels and spending hours checking connection times for Skyscanner flights is, it would seem, no longer how young professionals want to spend their precious free time.
We’ve never had more tools at our disposal to become our own travel agent – but do we really want the job? Simon Thompson is a 32-year-old architect who lives in Birmingham, and travelled to Chile with Flash Pack last year. “I really enjoy organising and planning trips, but I don’t think I could’ve found the time or energy to plan the itinerary with all the little details that a company can arrange,” he says. “Being in my thirities I felt like I didn’t really fit the demographic of people on their gap year or in retirement. It’s only recently that I’ve noticed companies like Flash Pack catering for people of my age and the style of travel I enjoy.
“They immerse you in the culture and lifestyle of the country you are in without feeling too much like a tourist, while doing and seeing some pretty amazing things.”
Bruce Poon Tip, founder of G Adventures, explains that “for decades, British people would just travel with other Brits, but now, we get to travel with Australians, Scandinavians, Chinese travellers – so what we have is a cultural adventure inside an adventure. Different cultures are coming together to explore another culture together.”
For solo travellers looking for a last-minute getaway this summer, then, ditching your phone in favour of like-minded travel companions might just make the trip of a lifetime.