How to Make Friends While Traveling Alone (Without It Being Weird)

You booked the trip. You're excited. And then, somewhere between packing and boarding, a quieter thought creeps in: am I going to be lonely?

If you've ever typed "is solo travel lonely" into Google at 1am before a trip, you're not alone in that either — it's one of the most common worries first-time solo travelers have, right up there with safety and budget. The good news: solo doesn't have to mean isolated. It just means the connection you make is optional instead of assigned to you, which honestly tends to make it better.

Here's how to actually make friends while traveling alone, without forcing it.

Why Making Friends While Traveling Alone Feels Harder Than It Should

Group trips come with built-in social scaffolding — you're stuck with the same people, so conversation just happens. Solo travel removes that scaffolding entirely. You have to opt in, every time, to talking to a stranger. That single extra step is where most of the anxiety lives.

It's not that solo travelers are worse at socialising. It's that the first move is harder when there's no shared context to lean on yet.

The Mindset Shift That Makes This Easier

Most solo travelers overestimate how awkward it'll be to talk to someone, and underestimate how open other solo travelers are to being talked to. Nearly everyone sitting alone at a gate, hostel common room, or walking tour is quietly hoping someone else makes the first move too.

Reframe it this way: you're not "bothering" a stranger. You're both already looking for the same thing.

Practical Ways to Meet People While Traveling Alone

At the Airport and During Layovers

Long layovers are dead time for everyone, which makes them oddly perfect for conversation. A shared gate, a delayed flight, a "please tell me you're also stuck here for four hours" — these are natural, low-stakes openers because you already have something in common: you're both going through it together, literally.

This is also, unsurprisingly, where a lot of solo travel anxiety concentrates. Airports are big, impersonal, and full of strangers who are all in their own headphones-on bubble. Finding who might be open to chatting isn't obvious.

At Your Accommodation

Hostels are the easiest version of this — common kitchens and lounges exist specifically for mingling. If you're not staying in a hostel, look for accommodations with communal breakfast or a rooftop bar; the built-in shared space does a lot of the work for you.

Around the Destination

Group activities — walking tours, cooking classes, pub crawls, hiking groups — are the single most reliable way to meet people while traveling alone, because everyone there already opted into being social. You're not interrupting anyone's solo time; that's not why they're there.

The Real Problem: You Rarely Know Who Else Wants to Connect

Here's the catch with almost all of the above: it relies on luck. You need to happen to sit near the right person, book the right hostel, join the right tour. Most of the time, you're surrounded by other solo travelers and you have no idea, because there's no signal telling you who's open to it.

That's the actual gap — not a lack of willing people, but a lack of visibility into who they are.

What If You Knew Who Else Was on Your Flight?

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. Instead of hoping you sit next to someone interesting or stumble into the right common room, you can see who else is going where you're going and make the first move before the awkward "should I say something" moment even happens.

It's built for solo travelers first, since that's where this problem is sharpest — but it works just as well if you're traveling as a couple looking to meet other travelers, or part of a group wanting to link up with people at your destination.

It's not live yet, but the waitlist is open, and early members get first access when it launches. If "traveling alone but not lonely" is the vibe you're going for, join the Aere waitlist here and skip the guesswork on your next trip.

Final Thought

Solo travel loneliness is almost never about being incapable of connecting — it's about not having an easy on-ramp to do it. Airports, layovers, and hostels already put you near the right people. You just need a slightly lower-friction way to say hello.

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