The hard part of meeting people as an adult is the shortage of settings where strangers talk to each other. Work, the gym and an established friend group produce the same faces, and a trip only changes that if the destination puts unfamiliar people at the same table for long enough to start a conversation. A 2026 survey of 3,309 solo travelers by the hostel company Hostelworld found that 37.3% travel alone specifically to meet new people, and 60.9% made their first friend in a hostel bar or common room.
Liverpool, England
Liverpool took first place in a 2025 TUI Musement analysis of reviews written by solo travelers, with an average score of 9.68 out of 10 for booked tours and activities. The study covered bookings from October 1, 2024, to September 30, 2025, and counted only destinations with at least 100 reviews. The city recorded 36.34 million visitors in 2025, up 12.3% on the year before, and the wider city region passed 61.5 million.
The Beatles remain the city's best-known attraction, and the rebuilt Cavern Club on Mathew Street still stages live bands. A person standing alone at a bar before a gig draws no attention in a city that receives this many visitors. English is also the local language, and a visitor from the United States or Canada needs no phrasebook to start a conversation.
Bangkok, Thailand
Bangkok received about 30.3 million international arrivals in 2025, more than any other city in Euromonitor International's annual ranking, although the total fell roughly 7% from 2024. TUI Musement placed it third for solo travelers, at 9.02. Thailand is also the most booked country among Hostelworld's solo customers, with 7.6% of their trips.
A city with this many arrivals has a steady supply of other people traveling alone, and much of what visitors buy is sold as a small-group outing. Cooking classes, river tours and night market food walks put a solo guest with the same handful of strangers for an afternoon or an evening, which is long enough for a conversation to continue past the first exchange.
Lisbon, Portugal
Lisbon's historic center is compact enough to cross on foot, and many evenings end at one of the miradouros, the public viewpoints over the Tagus River, where people gather with drinks at sunset. The city finished second in the TUI Musement ranking at 9.03, a hundredth of a point ahead of Bangkok. The municipality recorded 15.7 million overnight stays in 2024, which was 19.6% of the national total, and Greater Lisbon received 6.6 million guests between January and September 2025, 2.2% more than in the same months of 2024.
The wanderlove dating trend depends on places where a conversation with a stranger can begin without an introduction, and the miradouros at dusk offer that on most evenings. The rooftop bars of hostels in Bairro Alto and Alfama do the same in a smaller space.
Vienna, Austria
Vienna has the ball season, which runs from November to Shrove Tuesday and is busiest in January and February. The city also scored 9.00 in the TUI Musement ranking. More than 450 balls take place in the city each year, and most sell tickets or waiting-list places through their own websites. The Opera Ball is the hardest to attend, since it is filled from a waiting list.
A ball gives a solo guest a defined role for the night. Dancing with people one has never met is the expected behavior on the floor, and the event itself settles the usual problem of how to approach someone. Ball-going is a habit of Austrians themselves. A consumer survey on the 2026 ball season by the Austrian Retail Association found that 17% of Austrians planned to attend at least one dance event in 2026, so a visitor at a ball meets residents of the city as well as other tourists. Those Austrian guests spent an average of €201 each on preparatory purchases such as clothing. For a traveler, evening dress and a few lessons in the basic waltz before the trip are enough.
Barcelona, Spain
La Mercè, the city festival in late September, is the week to plan around. The 2025 program listed 107 concerts and 80 street performances, and more than 100 of the open-air concerts were free. Crowds at free concerts mix locals and visitors without any ticket or guest list, and a person attending alone is one of thousands in the square.
Barcelona placed eighth in the TUI Musement ranking, at 8.87, and Spain is the second most booked country among Hostelworld's solo travelers, at 6.4%. The country received a record 97 million foreign tourists in 2025. In Barcelona itself, 6.5% of tourists in October 2025 stayed in hostels, according to the city's tourism office.
Munich, Germany
Oktoberfest drew around 7.4 million visitors in 2026, a record, compared with about 6.5 million in 2025. The festival tents have roughly 120,000 seats in total, and the largest, the Hofbräu-Festzelt, has about 10,000.
Service in the tents is at the tables, and the tables are long and shared, so a person who arrives alone sits beside strangers as a matter of course. Asking if a seat is free is the standard way in. The festival lasts about 16 days, from late September into early October, and a solo visitor does best to arrive near opening time on a weekday, when unreserved seats are easier to find.
Munich's beer gardens use the same seating outside festival season. The Hirschgarten, the largest beer garden in the city, has seating for about 8,000 people. A visitor who comes in May or July finds a place at whichever table has room and spends the afternoon beside whoever else arrived.
The First Night's Booking
Where a solo traveler sleeps on the first night decides who they meet first. A hostel with shared social space, or a place on a small-group tour, puts the traveler among other people who came alone. Group tours draw these travelers in large numbers. On Intrepid Travel's women's expeditions, which grew 32% in 2025, about 77% of travelers booked alone. Book the first 2 nights in one of those settings in any of these 6 cities, and plan the rest of the trip after meeting the people there.
Post a Comment