Traveling alone can seem like the most freeing experience … or the most terrifying. Luckily, there’s a way to dip your toes into solo travel without losing the security of a group vacation: Take a hybrid solo trip. It’s the ideal getaway for anyone who longs to wander the world alone but breaks out in a cold sweat just thinking about booking that ticket for one.
When I started my international tour company, EscapingNY, I noticed that many of my guests liked the idea of solo travel, but they weren’t quite ready for it. They joined my tours because I offered a lot of different activities but still allowed free time to explore. These travelers often got comfortable in the group setting, then gained the confidence to go out on their own during free time, even in faraway places like Cuba and Jordan.
I’ve relied on hybrid solo travel myself—it’s a great way to vacation with friends or family who have different travel styles from my own. So how can you make it work for you? Drawing on my own experiences and those of Madeline Driver, a frequent traveler from New York City who’s a fan of hybrid solo travel, I’m sharing the tips and tricks that have allowed us to enjoy many hybrid solo vacations with friends and family. Read on to find out how you can do it too.
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What is hybrid solo travel?
Hybrid solo travel is a loose group trip where you gather friends or family to travel together, while retaining the flexibility of a solo adventure. You can do some activities together and some alone, or you could have completely different schedules, sharing only accommodations and a few meals.
The beauty of hybrid solo travel is that you get to decide exactly what it means to you and how you’re going to enact it. You might set aside a portion of each day for solo activities, then spend the rest of the time together. Or you might simply share a home base but spend the bulk of your time alone. You might even extend your solo time with a side quest, like booking a place with friends in Italy’s Cinque Terre but having a solo adventure in Florence.
Driver’s group vacations with friends are now hybrid solo trips. Recently, they all stayed at the same all-inclusive resort in Mexico and spent most afternoons and evenings together, but she reserved the mornings for herself so she could schedule activities that weren’t of interest to the rest of the group.
During a recent trip to Venice, my sister and I specifically chose to stay on the sleepy nearby island of Murano, which is quiet and away from the action. My sister gets anxious and overwhelmed with busy cities and packed itineraries, so we went with a hotel that had a relaxing vibe and waterfront views that let her read, think, journal and just sit in peace while I tackled my nonstop itinerary.
My sister and I took one Venice walking tour together and had breakfast together each morning, but she spent the rest of the time alone at our glass-factory-turned-hotel while I ran myself silly. It was the perfect hybrid solo trip for both of us because we each got to do exactly what we wanted.
How does a hybrid solo trip offer the best of both worlds?
Hybrid solo trips let you combine the best aspects of solo and group travel, so you can create the perfect family vacation or group getaway. These trips let you spend time with loved ones and share some costs while enjoying some of the freedom and flexibility of solo travel.
There’s built-in security
With hybrid solo travel, you get the security of the group (there’s safety in numbers), but you can still do things your way. Stressed about navigating international travel on your own or worried you’ll have a medical emergency without anyone around to help? If you’re on a hybrid trip, you’ll have your crew there for support.
You can save money
Highly personalized solo trips can be really expensive because you’re not sharing the costs of transportation, guides and accommodations. With a group trip, major costs are spread across the group, cutting down on your overall out-of-pocket expenses. Even if you spend much of the time alone during a hybrid solo trip, sharing some of the travel costs can be a game changer for your wallet.
There’s group camaraderie
Traveling alone can get lonely (especially during extended trips), but hybrid solo trips allow for camaraderie during group tours and shared meals. Every group is different, so you may want to spend much of the day together, but you also may just want to allocate a certain time of day (say, mornings) to group activities.
It offers flexibility
Because you and your group will be designing your own trip, you’ll get to decide exactly what you want that itinerary to look like. This way, you can work with your group to include free time so you have the flexibility to do your own thing.
As a very active traveler, I like to create incredibly packed schedules for my personal vacations, but they tend to be way too much for my friends and family. If we stick to my schedule, they feel overwhelmed and exhausted, but if we skip things, I’d feel disappointed and like I’m not getting the most out of my trip. Hybrid solo vacations give us all the flexibility we need to truly enjoy the experience.
You have the ability to explore
Driver loves traveling with her friends, but she began noticing that many of them have different interests and travel styles from her. “I realized that either I’d have to skip a lot of the things I really wanted to do,” she says, “or I’d go do them on my own and my friends would get upset and feel like I abandoned them.”
Going on a hybrid solo trip gives everyone a chance to vacation in their own way. Because you can build so much flexibility into this type of travel, you get the ability to explore on your own. This could include lazy walks around town, reading in local cafes or intense full-day hiking and biking adventures.
How can you make a hybrid solo trip work for you?
To prevent problems coming up during your vacation and to have the best success with a hybrid solo trip, talk with everyone well before you travel. Any successful vacation requires planning, and to ensure the success of your first hybrid solo trip, you’ll want to prepare and confirm details in advance with your entire group.
Do some pre-trip planning
Typically, you’ll need to talk more than once, and the bigger, longer and more complicated the trip is, the more you’ll need to discuss.
Schedule group calls (video calls can be fun), start a WhatsApp group chat or create a private, trip-specific Facebook group. You can also share Google Docs, where everyone can add their input and respond to others’ ideas.
Get everyone on the same page
Diverse groups have diverse interests, so discuss these in advance. One person may want to spend the entire trip lounging at the beach, while another wants to go on walking tours at 8 a.m. every day and another wants to sleep in and go out dancing late every night. All these scenarios could work together, so long as the group confirms in advance that it’s OK that everyone does their own thing.
I’m a very active traveler, so I don’t spend a lot of time at the hotel or on the beach. I always share this with potential travel companions to confirm they’d either like to do activities with me or would be OK staying back at the hotel by themselves. This is exactly what my sister and I did when we visited Italy. We confirmed the walking tour we wanted to do together in busy and bustling Venice, then we did our own things.
Discuss budgets
Whether you’re traveling on a budget or planning a luxurious group retreat, it’s essential to go over money matters with your crew. Confirm what everyone’s budget is, especially if you’ll be sharing a condo or renting an apartment. If you all have very different budgets, it may work better to stay at a hotel where some travelers can book budget rooms and others can stay in luxury suites. The latter is Driver’s preferred option, “My friends don’t travel as much as me, so they like to splurge on fancy suites, whereas I’d rather book a budget room so I can afford to travel more during the year.”
Meals can make up a big part of trip costs, so confirm if you plan to eat out a lot together, and if so, be on the same page about the sort of restaurants that are within everyone’s budgets. If your suite, homestay or apartment has a kitchen, this could be a great way to save money on meals, whether they’re shared with the group or on your own.
Share your itinerary
While it may not be necessary to send everyone in your group a detailed spreadsheet of every single activity you want to do on the trip, it can be helpful to let them know ahead of time about any activities you definitely plan to do. This way, you can still check off the must-dos on your trip list while also letting your friends know that you want to spend time with them.
Driver loves traveling with her friends, but she’s the only one in the group who’s an avid scuba diver. “My friends love going to brunch on vacation, so I usually tell them to go enjoy a leisurely brunch while I get in my morning dives, then we meet up in the afternoon or evening to do something together.”
Establish ground rules
Ground rules can be helpful when planning any group vacation, and they are especially important when you’re sharing accommodations. How does everyone feel about TVs and phones blaring early in the morning or late at night? Should everyone dump their phones into a basket during group time to focus on talking about the day or playing board games instead of looking at social media?
What about smokers? Is smoking allowed on the property, or will having the smell of cigarettes wafting into windows ruin someone else’s enjoyment? Are kids allowed? If you’re planning a hybrid solo family vacation, would the trip be appropriate for all ages or just for smaller kids (or, conversely, just for teenagers and college kids)?
If most travelers will be doing their own thing during the day, does the group want to set a rule that everyone meets for dinner in the evening? Or should the group agree on sharing breakfast together every morning, then doing their own thing?
While your group is in the trip planning stage, you’ll have the opportunity to bounce ideas off one another and determine which ground rules make sense for your trip.
Do you need to take a hybrid solo trip with friends or family?
Nope! An excellent way to get comfortable with solo travel is by joining a group tour that caters to individual travelers.
Tour companies like Wilderness Travel, Trek Travel and Intrepid specialize in small group tours that immerse travelers in the destinations they visit. Many who join these trips are also solo travelers who enjoy the camaraderie and cost savings of the group, along with the freedom and flexibility they get from the free time built into the schedule. (Pro tip: Before booking a trip, review the itinerary to ensure you’ll have a lot of free time to yourself, if that’s important to you.)
Last summer, I joined a group walking and hiking tour with Trek Travel in the Dolomites, a stunning mountainous region in northern Italy. I loved that the trip included several routes each day so I could choose to do a challenging mountain hike or make it much easier on myself by taking gondolas and doing shorter routes.
Not only was the daily group schedule flexible, but there was a lot of free time after hikes, which I usually spent relaxing in the hotel’s sauna by myself or reading on the patio. While I was on my own, I learned that some of the others in the group enjoyed going out to explore together. Essentially, we all customized the group tour into a hybrid solo-group trip according to our interests.
When the five-day group trip ended (in the gorgeous Alta Badia area of the Dolomites), I felt confident and comfortable in my surroundings, so I spent another five days there exploring alone.
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Source:
- Madeline Driver, frequent traveler who regularly takes hybrid solo trips with friends; phone interview, March 2026
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