Solo travel is safer than most people assume — but it requires a different kind of preparation than travelling with others. When something goes wrong and there’s no one beside you to help, the decisions you made before you left matter enormously.
This guide brings together everything on gotravelyourself.com related to staying safe as a solo traveller: how to assess a destination’s safety before you go, the apps worth having on your phone, the specific risks for solo female travellers, and the practical habits that experienced solo travellers use every time.
None of this is designed to frighten you off going. It’s designed to make sure you go informed.
Quick answer: is solo travel safe?
For most travellers in most popular destinations, yes. The most common problems are petty theft, tourist scams and poor planning, not violent crime, and most of them can be prevented with preparation. Safety depends more on how you travel than on where you go.
Solo travel safety checklist:
- Check your government’s travel advisory for your destination before booking.
- Book accommodation with recent reviews from solo travellers and a staffed reception if possible.
- Share your itinerary with someone at home and agree on check-ins.
- Download offline maps and save local emergency numbers.
- Arrive in daylight and know how you will get from the airport or station to your accommodation.
- Keep copies of your passport and cards separate from the originals.
- Buy travel insurance with medical evacuation cover.
- Trust your instincts and leave any situation that feels wrong.
How safe is solo travel, really?
The perception of solo travel as dangerous is largely based on edge cases and media coverage that disproportionately reports negative outcomes. The reality, for most travellers in most destinations, is that solo travel is manageable and often surprisingly safe — provided you make sensible decisions.
The risks that solo travellers actually face most often are not dramatic. They are petty theft, scams targeted at obvious tourists, getting stranded due to poor planning, and the heightened vulnerability that comes from being visibly alone in an unfamiliar place at the wrong time. Most of these are preventable with preparation and habit rather than avoidance.
The variables that matter most are not where you go, but how you travel. A solo traveller who researches their destination, books verified accommodation, shares their itinerary with someone at home, and knows which neighbourhoods to avoid after dark is safer in almost any city than a group traveller who does none of these things.
Assessing destination safety before you go
Not all destinations carry equal risk for solo travellers, and risk profiles change. What was safe two years ago may not be now. Our approach to assessing destination safety draws on several sources in combination:
Government travel advisories are the most authoritative starting point. The UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) and the US State Department both publish regularly updated advice for every destination, and the State Department rates each country on a four-level scale from normal precautions to “do not travel”. Your own government’s equivalent is worth checking too. These are not infallible, and they tend to be conservative, but they are the baseline. Check the advisory for your destination before booking, not just before departing.
Solo-Readiness Scores (SRS) are our own assessment framework, developed to give solo travellers a more nuanced picture than general travel advisories provide. A destination that is broadly safe for all tourists may still score poorly for a solo traveller arriving alone at night for the first time. The SRS rates a city on six weighted pillars: safety after dark, value for one, getting around, social infrastructure, solo accommodation supply and everyday ease.
→ Top 10 Cities for Solo Travelers — Solo-Readiness Scores → Top 10 Cities for Solo Female Travelers — SRS Rankings
Solo female travel safety
Female solo travellers face a specific set of risks that male travellers generally don’t — and deserve specific, honest advice rather than generic reassurance. The guides below focus on solo female travel and draw on first-hand experience and current advisories.
The countries and cities that score highest for solo female travellers share certain characteristics: reliable public transport running late into the night, accommodation options where single female guests are normal rather than unusual, low rates of street harassment, and clear norms around women’s independence in public spaces. These factors matter more to daily safety than crime statistics in isolation.
→ 25 Best Places for Solo Female Travel That Are Actually Safe → Best European Countries for Solo Female Travelers → Solo Female Travel in Colombia: A Comprehensive Guide → Solo Female Travel Groups: How to Find and Join Them
Essential safety apps for solo travellers
Your phone is your most important safety tool when travelling alone. The apps below cover the core needs: offline maps for when you have no data, emergency contacts, location sharing, and translation in situations where communication is critical.
→ 12 Best Apps for Solo Travelers (2026): Safety, Maps & More
The short list if you install nothing else:
Maps.me or Google Maps offline — download your destination’s maps before you leave the airport. Never be in a position where you’re visibly lost and staring at your phone on a street corner without a data connection.
WhatsApp — universal enough to work in almost every country, and the easiest way to share your live location with someone at home. Use the “Share Live Location” feature for the first 24 hours in a new destination.
Smart Traveler and STEP (US) — the State Department’s official app and its free Smart Traveler Enrollment Program. Enrolling your trip in STEP lets the nearest embassy contact you in an emergency and sends you alerts by email for your destination. UK travelers can follow the FCDO’s travel advice for each country on GOV.UK.
Local emergency numbers — save the emergency numbers for each country you visit in your phone before you arrive. 112 works across the EU, but the number you need in a genuine emergency is not always 112.
Accommodation safety for solo travellers
Where you sleep is one of the highest-leverage safety decisions you make as a solo traveller. The wrong accommodation puts you in the wrong neighbourhood, at the wrong time, without the support of staff who are used to looking after solo guests.
What to look for: Accommodation that explicitly welcomes solo travellers will have smaller room options (not just rooms priced for doubles), common areas where guests mix, 24-hour reception or a reliable contact method, and verifiable reviews from solo travellers — not just couples or families.
What to avoid: Properties with no reviews from solo guests, accommodation in industrial or poorly-lit neighbourhoods chosen purely on price, and anywhere the closest safe transport option is more than a short walk away after dark.
Hostels vs hotels for safety: Hostels in well-reviewed solo-travel-friendly cities are often safer than budget hotels for solo travellers — not because hostels are more secure, but because they have a social environment that means you’re less visibly alone, staff who deal with solo travellers every day, and an informal network of guests to ask for local advice.
→ Where to Stay in Tokyo as a Solo Traveler → Hotels and Accommodation for Solo Travelers
Practical safety habits that experienced solo travellers use
These are the habits that distinguish experienced solo travellers from first-timers — not instincts developed over years of near-misses, but decisions made before departure that change the risk profile of a trip.
Share your itinerary before you leave. Tell someone at home your accommodation details, planned activities, and expected check-in times for each destination. Agree on a check-in schedule — a simple WhatsApp message every 24-48 hours. If you miss a check-in, they know to follow up.
Research the specific risks before arrival, not on arrival. Every destination has its own scam patterns, its own neighbourhoods that are fine by day and not by night, its own transport traps for obvious tourists. Five minutes on the destination’s subreddit or TripAdvisor forum before you go is worth more than a guidebook’s general safety section.
Know where you’re going before you leave the airport or station. Arriving in a new city tired, disoriented, and obviously consulting your phone makes you a target. Download offline maps, pre-book your first night’s transport, and have the address of your accommodation saved somewhere accessible without unlocking your phone.
Keep your documents separate from your valuables. If your bag is stolen, losing your phone and wallet is recoverable. Losing your passport on day one of a three-week trip is a different problem entirely. Keep a digital copy of your passport on encrypted cloud storage and email it to yourself.
Trust your instincts about people and situations. Solo travellers sometimes override their instincts out of politeness, cultural deference, or not wanting to seem paranoid. An uncomfortable feeling about a person, a taxi, a situation, or a neighbourhood is worth acting on — leaving, declining, changing plans. The social cost of an awkward exit from a situation is always lower than the alternative.
Travel insurance for solo travellers
Solo travellers have less margin for error than group travellers when things go wrong — no one to lend you cash, cover for you in a medical situation, or help you navigate a problem in a language you don’t speak. Travel insurance is not optional for solo travel; it is the single most important financial preparation you can make.
The coverage that matters most for solo travellers specifically: medical evacuation (not just treatment), trip cancellation for any reason (solo travellers are more likely to have a trip disrupted by a personal emergency with no one to take over), and coverage for solo activities that group travel policies sometimes exclude (hiking, motorbike hire, water sports).
Check the policy exclusions before you buy, not after you need to claim.
Safety by destination type
Different destinations present different risk profiles for solo travellers. The guides below cover safety in specific contexts:
City travel: → How Safe Is New York City for Tourists? → Solo Travel Tips: How to Enjoy Traveling by Yourself → Traveling Alone for the First Time: Tips for a Confident Adventure
Regional guides: → Best Solo Travel Destinations for Outdoor Adventure → Solo Travel for Introverts: 12 Tips to Thrive on Your Own
Solo travel safety FAQ
Is it safe to travel alone as a woman?
Many women travel alone safely every year. The main differences are a higher chance of street harassment in some places and a stronger need to plan late-night transport and accommodation. See our guide to the 25 best places for solo female travel.
What is the biggest risk when travelling alone?
Usually theft and scams, followed by getting into trouble through poor planning, such as arriving late at night with no transport arranged. Medical emergencies without insurance are the costliest risk.
Which apps should I install?
Offline maps, a messaging app for sharing your live location, your government’s travel alert service and a translation app. See our list of the best apps for solo travelers.
What should I do if something goes wrong?
Move to a safe, public place, contact local emergency services, then your embassy or consulate and your insurer. If you lose your passport, read what to do if you lose your passport abroad.
Where should I go on my first solo trip?
Pick somewhere with good public transport and plenty of other travellers. See traveling alone for the first time and our 12-step guide to planning a solo trip.
A note on how we write about safety
Safety information for solo travellers sits in the same category as medical or financial advice — the stakes of getting it wrong are real. We take that seriously.
Every safety guide on gotravelyourself.com is written by a writer with direct, first-hand experience of the destination or situation they’re writing about. Some of our writers publish under pen names for their own safety and privacy; every experience claim they make is real, and our pen-name policy explains how we stand behind that. We draw on current government travel advisories, verified recent traveller reports, and the firsthand knowledge of our writers. We update safety content when the situation on the ground changes — if a destination’s risk profile has shifted, we say so.
We do not overstate safety to encourage bookings, and we do not understate risk to avoid controversy. If a destination has genuine risks for solo travellers — and some do — we say so plainly, and we give you the specific information you need to decide whether those risks are acceptable to you.
Ultimately, the decision about where to go and how much risk to accept is yours. Our job is to make sure you make that decision with accurate information.
Our editorial standards explain in full how we research and verify the content on this site.
About the authors
The safety guides on this site are written by our core team of solo travel writers, each with direct experience of the destinations they cover. Some publish under pen names; see our pen-name policy.
Jennifer Ann Porter covers solo travel safety broadly, with a focus on Europe and Southeast Asia. Full profile →
Luciana Murillo covers Latin America, including Colombia and Argentina, where safety considerations for solo female travellers require specific local knowledge. Writes in English and Spanish. Full profile →
Vamika Sharma covers Asia, including India, Thailand and Japan. Full profile →
Andrea Novak covers Central Europe and the Adriatic, including Austria and Croatia. Full profile →
Last reviewed: October 2026