How to Stay Safe and Confident While Traveling Alone – Episode 14

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How to Stay Safe and Confident While Traveling Alone: Essential Tips for Solo Female Travelers

Solo travel is one of the most empowering things you can do for yourself. The freedom to go where you want, when you want, at whatever pace feels right — there’s truly nothing like it.

But if you’re wondering how to stay safe and confident while traveling alone, you’ve come to the right place. On a recent episode of Bon Voyage Besties, Rosa and I sat down to share our most honest, hard-earned tips for solo travel safety, including some stories that still make us laugh (and cringe) to this day.

This isn’t about scaring you out of booking that trip. It’s about making sure you go prepared, so you can focus on what actually matters: the adventure.

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Don’t Announce That You’re Traveling Alone

This one might feel counterintuitive, especially in the age of “solo travel era” content all over your feed. But Rosa learned this lesson firsthand on her very first solo trip to the Dominican Republic. She was at the resort’s nightclub, got to chatting with a lovely mother-daughter duo from the UK, and before she knew it, they were introducing her to their entire group as “the girl from New York who’s here by herself.”

Rosa’s initial reaction was to feel empowered. But then it hit her: she had just advertised her vulnerability to a room full of strangers she’d never met. Even in a resort she knew well, with staff she recognized, that moment made her feel unexpectedly unsafe.

The takeaway? Read the room. You don’t have to lie, but you don’t have to volunteer the information either. Saying you’re “meeting up with friends later” or simply redirecting the conversation is perfectly reasonable. When you’re figuring out how to stay safe and confident while traveling alone, protecting that information is one of the simplest and most effective things you can do.

Research Your Destination Thoroughly Before You Go

Flexibility is one of the great joys of solo travel, but it cannot come at the expense of preparation. Before you leave, do your homework on your destination and go beyond just TripAdvisor reviews.

For US citizens, Travel.Gov is a great starting point for understanding safety conditions at your destination. I personally also cross-reference with travel guidance from the UK and Canada, because they often offer a slightly different lens on the same destination and give me a more complete picture.

Also register with the State Department’s STEP program (Smart Traveler Enrollment Program). It’s free, and it means the nearest embassy can reach you if something happens in-country. I was in Estonia once, on my way to catch a boat to Finland, and got a text from the State Department about a bomb threat at the airport. I wasn’t heading to the airport, but that heads-up still mattered.

Also think through the logistics of getting from the airport to your accommodation, especially if you’re arriving after a long flight, dealing with jet lag, or, like me, taking medication that leaves you feeling a bit out of it. I’ve been very open about being a fearful flyer who takes Xanax for long-haul flights. Getting off a ten-hour flight feeling foggy and then having to navigate public transit is not the moment to be winging it. Know your route cold before you land.

Hotel Safety: Small Habits That Make a Big Difference

When Rosa travels solo, she always requests a room near the elevator rather than at the end of a long hallway, and she asks specifically for no adjoining rooms. These might sound like small details, but they make a measurable difference in how safe and comfortable you feel, especially when you’re arriving somewhere new late at night.

And regardless of where your room is located: deadbolt your door. Every single time. I do this at home in my apartment and I absolutely do it in hotels. This tip became personal for me when I checked into a hotel in Rochester for a press trip and discovered — via a virtual key the app had assigned me — that I had been sent to the wrong room. I opened the door to find a man sleeping in what he thought was his room. We were both terrified. The front desk was mortified. My sister-in-law pointed out afterward that she wasn’t sure who had the worse scare — me or the poor guy.

The lesson: systems fail, apps glitch, hotels make mistakes. A deadbolt is the one thing that’s entirely within your control. Use it.

Keep Your Documents and Valuables Secure

Knowing how to stay safe and confident while traveling alone also means protecting your things when you step out for the day. A few habits that have served me well:

Split up your resources. I never leave the hotel with all of my cash and every credit card I own. I keep backups locked in the safe, some cash, a spare card, so that if I do get pickpocketed, I’m not completely stranded.

If your room doesn’t have a safe, Rosa’s solution is to bring her own lock and secure her valuables inside her luggage. Simple, cheap, effective.

Carry a photo of your passport’s main information page. If your passport gets stolen, having that photo speeds up the replacement process enormously at the embassy. It’s one photo and it could save you days of stress.

And print things out. Rosa’s habit of printing hotel confirmations with addresses has saved her more than once — especially in destinations with spotty cell service or wifi.

Have a Backup Plan for Your Phone

Speaking of cell service: do not assume your phone will work the way you need it to. I learned this the hard way in Japan, when my Verizon service went completely dark mid-trip during an international outage. My phone was a brick. I found out what was happening via Reddit — on train station wifi — and fixed the situation by downloading an eSIM with a temporary Japanese number so I could reach my family.

eSIMs are genuinely worth looking into before any international trip. Rosa uses them regularly to avoid the expensive daily roaming fees carriers charge. And always travel with a backup battery pack so that even if your service is spotty, your phone stays on.

Travel Insurance Is Non-Negotiable

This one doesn’t get talked about enough in solo travel content, so we’re saying it plainly: your domestic health insurance almost certainly does not cover you overseas. And your credit card’s travel insurance likely covers delays and lost luggage — not a medical emergency.

If you twist your ankle hiking in Iceland and need to be airlifted to a hospital, you could be looking at a six-figure bill with no coverage. I buy an annual international health insurance plan through Allianz so I’m covered year-round without having to remember to renew before every trip. Rosa has a friend who was hospitalized in Dubai after falling off a camel on a desert excursion — they ended up paying a substantial amount out of pocket because they weren’t properly covered.

Get the insurance. It’s one of the most concrete things you can do to travel confidently alone.

Trust Your Gut — Without Apology

This is the big one. Women especially are socialized to second-guess themselves, to wonder if we’re being dramatic or paranoid. When it comes to solo travel safety, that instinct to dismiss your own discomfort is worth overriding.

Rosa ended up in a hotel that just felt wrong — sketchy vibe, sketchy people, reviews that hadn’t warned her — and her gut told her immediately she did not want to be there. She had Michael with her that time, but she said plainly: if she’d been alone, she would have slept in her car rather than stay.

That’s not an overreaction.

If you arrive somewhere and it doesn’t feel right, give yourself full permission to leave. Spend the extra money on different accommodation. Yes, it’s inconvenient. Yes, money can be tight. But as I said on the episode: money comes back. You don’t.

Safety in Numbers Doesn’t Mean Sacrificing Your Solo Experience

One of the best-kept secrets of how to stay safe and confident while traveling alone is this: you don’t have to do everything alone. Guided pub crawls, walking tours, ghost tours, cooking classes. These are all ways to enjoy a destination with other people around you while still being on your own trip.

If you love hostels, many offer private ensuite rooms that feel like a boutique hotel stay while still giving you access to the communal energy and group activities. I’m personally a big fan of this model in Europe, even as I’ve gotten to an age where dorm rooms are firmly in my past.

And if you’re brand new to solo travel, start local. If you’re in New Jersey like me, a solo day in New York City is genuinely good training. It’s big, it’s loud, it moves fast, and if you can navigate that confidently, you can handle a lot of what international travel throws at you.

Solo travel is not the reckless thing some people make it out to be and it’s not the breezy, consequence-free fantasy that social media sometimes sells either. It’s something in between: genuinely wonderful, genuinely freeing, and made so much better when you go in prepared. Do the research, trust your instincts, tell someone your itinerary, deadbolt your door, and get the insurance.

Then go have the trip of your life.

Have a solo travel question or a story of your own? Find us at Bon Voyage Besties on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube — we’d love to hear from you. Safe travels, besties. Bon voyage!