Best Ways to Meet People While Traveling (Solo, With a Partner, or in a Group)

Ask anyone about their favorite travel memory and there's a good chance it involves a person, not just a place. The stranger who became a friend on a night train. The couple you swapped restaurant tips with over breakfast. The group you ended up bar-hopping with after one polite "where are you guys headed next?"

Most advice about meeting people while traveling is aimed at solo travelers — and for good reason, it's where the need is sharpest. But it's not the only place it shows up. Couples want to meet other travelers too. So do groups of friends, business travelers with a free evening, and pretty much anyone who'd rather their trip include a few good conversations along the way.

Here's how to actually make that happen, whoever you're traveling with.

Meeting People Isn't Just a Solo Travel Problem

Solo travelers get an obvious nudge to be social — there's no one else to talk to, so the incentive is built in. But traveling with a partner or a group doesn't remove the want to connect, it just removes the urgency. You can go a whole trip only talking to each other, and plenty of people do.

The travelers who end up with the best stories are usually the ones who treated meeting people as part of the plan, not something that only happens if you're alone.

In Transit: Airports, Flights, and Layovers

Transit time is the great equalizer — solo, coupled up, or in a group, everyone's stuck in the same terminal. A delayed gate, a long layover, a "please tell me you're on this flight too" moment: these are natural openers precisely because you already have something in common with the stranger next to you.

If you're traveling solo, I've written a full guide on making friends while traveling alone and a separate one on what to do during a long layover — both go deeper on this exact moment. If you're with a partner or group, the same logic applies, just aimed outward: you're not just filling your own layover, you're two (or four, or six) people looking for one interesting conversation to break up the wait.

At Your Accommodation

Hostels are the classic setup for this — common kitchens and lounges that exist specifically so strangers end up talking. But the same principle works well beyond hostels. Home-shares with a host who actually hangs around, resorts with a communal pool bar, small guesthouses with one shared breakfast table — anywhere the space is built for people to overlap, connection tends to follow.

If you're traveling as a couple, this is often the easiest way to meet other couples — you're both there to relax, you both have a partner as a social buffer, and "where are you two from?" is about as low-stakes as small talk gets.

Structured Activities Beat Random Luck

Walking tours, cooking classes, day trips, pub crawls, co-working spaces for remote-working travelers — anything with a shared activity works better than hoping the right person sits next to you. Everyone there has already opted into being social, so there's no guessing about whether someone's open to a conversation.

This holds regardless of who you're traveling with. Groups can meet other groups on a group hike. Couples can meet other couples at a cooking class. Solo travelers get the most obvious benefit, but the mechanism is the same for everyone: shared activity removes the awkwardness of the first move.

The Real Problem: You Never Know Who Else Wants to Connect

Here's what all of the above has in common: it relies on luck. You have to happen to be in the right terminal, book the right hostel, sign up for the right tour. Most of the time, you're surrounded by other travelers who'd also love to meet someone new — you just have no way of knowing which ones.

That's the actual gap. Not a shortage of people who want to connect, but a lack of visibility into who they are.

How Aere Makes This Easier — For Every Kind of Traveler

This is the exact problem I'm building Aere to solve. Aere is a social travel app that connects you with other travelers on your same flight, in your airport, or headed to your destination — before you even land, and regardless of whether you're traveling solo, as a couple, or with a group.

Instead of hoping the right person sits next to you or joins your tour, you can see who else is going where you're going and make the first move before the moment passes. Solo travelers can find other solo travelers. Couples can find other couples. Groups can find groups headed to the same place. It's the same underlying idea — visibility instead of luck — just applied to however you happen to be traveling.

It's not live yet, but the waitlist is open, and early members get first access when we launch. If you'd rather stop leaving your travel connections to chance, join the Aere waitlist here.

Final Thought

Meeting people while traveling was never really about being alone or not — it's about whether you can actually see who else is open to connecting. Airports, accommodations, and shared activities already put the right people near you. The missing piece is just a lower-friction way to find them.