What to Do If You’re Travelling Solo and Feel Lonely

Solo travel is one of the most freeing, exciting things you can do. It’s also, occasionally, lonely. Not all the time, and not for everyone, but the feeling shows up. A beautiful view that you want to share with someone. A funny moment that lands flat when there’s nobody to laugh with. A long evening in a city where you don’t know anyone and don’t quite know how to start.

This is one of the most normal experiences in solo travel, and it’s one of the least talked about. There’s a tendency to present solo travel as one long confident adventure, which does a disservice to the genuine emotional texture of it. Loneliness on the road doesn’t mean you made a mistake. It means you’re human.

The good news is that solo travel loneliness is almost always temporary, and there are genuinely practical things you can do about it. From the way you book your accommodation, to the apps on your phone, to the simple act of sitting at a communal table at the right moment, connection is usually closer than it feels.

This guide covers the whole picture: why it happens, what to do when it does, and how to build a trip that makes meaningful connection more likely from the start.

💭 Why Loneliness Happens (and Why That’s Okay)

Understanding why solo travel loneliness happens makes it less alarming when it does.

It often arrives in specific moments rather than as a persistent state. The transition between places, when you’ve just arrived somewhere new and haven’t found your footing yet. The evening hours, when groups form around dinner and drinks and solo travellers can feel on the outside of something. The quiet days, when a slower pace that would feel peaceful with company feels isolating alone.

It can also arrive after a run of good social days. A few great conversations, a group you clicked with, and then they move on and you’re alone again. The contrast makes the loneliness feel sharper than the baseline.

None of this means solo travel isn’t worth it. The lows are real, and so is everything else: the freedom, the self-discovery, the connections you make precisely because you’re open to them in a way that travelling in a group doesn’t require. Most experienced solo travellers describe loneliness as a passing weather system rather than a defining feature of the experience.

The key is knowing what to do when the weather rolls in.

Book Your Next Hostel

🏨 Start With Where You Stay

The single most controllable factor in solo travel loneliness is accommodation. Where you sleep shapes everything about your social possibilities, and a hostel chosen with social connection in mind is a fundamentally different experience from a private room in a budget hotel.

Hostels designed around community, with common areas, shared meals, organised events, and staff who actively bring guests together, make connection almost effortless. You don’t have to be outgoing. You don’t have to perform. You sit in the common room, someone asks where you’re from, and an hour later you have dinner plans.

What to look for in a hostel when you’re travelling solo:

• Organised events (pub crawls, walking tours, hostel dinners, game nights)
• Common areas that invite lingering: a bar, a good kitchen, an outdoor terrace
• Dorm options that place you with other travellers rather than isolating you in a private room
• High ratings specifically mentioning the social atmosphere or friendly staff
• Hostelworld reviews that mention meeting people, making friends, or the hostel’s community feel

The hostel you choose is not just a bed. It’s your social infrastructure for that part of the trip.

📱 The Hostelworld App: Your Social Layer on the Road

Here’s something that makes a real difference for solo travellers in 2026, and it’s built directly into the Hostelworld app.

When you book a hostel through Hostelworld, you get access to two chat features that open up the social possibilities significantly:

• Hostel Chat: a group chat with other travellers staying at your hostel. You can join it 48 hours before check-in, which means you can start meeting your future dorm-mates before you even arrive. Coordinate plans, ask questions, suggest a group dinner. It breaks the ice before you’ve even walked through the door.
• City Chat: a broader chat with travellers staying at any hostel in the same city. Not just your hostel. All of them. This is where travellers share tips, organise meetups, find people to explore with, and ask questions about the destination from people who are already there.

Both chats are available through the app’s Chat tab. They’re free with any confirmed booking, and they change the solo travel dynamic completely. You can arrive in a new city already knowing people. That’s not a small thing.

🌍 Hostelworld Social Pass: For When You’re Not Booked Yet

The Hostelworld Social Pass takes the social features a step further. Before the Social Pass, the chat and community tools were only available once you had a hostel booking. Now that’s changed.

With the Social Pass, you can chat, plan trips, share your travel ideas, and join community events anytime, even if you do not have a booking. Whether you’re between bookings, planning a trip from home, or travelling in a way that doesn’t involve a traditional hostel stay, the Social Pass keeps you connected to the wider community.

Available across more than 180 cities, Social Pass opens access to curated meetups, group activities, and traveler chats tied to specific destinations.

What the Social Pass gives you:

• Access to city chats without a confirmed hostel booking
• Curated local meetups and events
• Traveller profiles to find people with similar itineraries
• The full social layer of the Hostelworld app, wherever you are

It’s a paid, non-subscription pass that unlocks the full social side of the app for a set period. Get it through the Hostelworld app on iOS or Android.

🎉 Use Events to Break the Ice

Hostel events are specifically designed to do the hard work of social introduction for you, and they’re one of the most underused tools for combating solo travel loneliness.

Most social hostels run a calendar of activities: pub crawls that take groups to the best local bars, city walking tours led by a staff member who knows the neighbourhood, group dinners where everyone contributes and conversation happens naturally, games nights, cooking classes, rooftop sundowners. These are not embarrassing tourist activities. They’re genuinely fun, and they work because everyone who shows up is in the same position: hoping to meet people.

You don’t have to be outgoing to go to a hostel event. You just have to show up. The format does the rest.

The Hostelworld app surfaces hostel events in the City Chat and in hostel listings. You can browse what’s on, RSVP, and see who else is going before you arrive. The Local Events feature connects you to activities hosted by participating hostels across the city, not just your own.

Before you even arrive, check the Hostelworld Events page. It lists events happening in cities worldwide, from walking tours and food markets to club nights and cultural experiences. Knowing what’s on in the city during your visit gives you an instant social plan and makes it much easier to suggest something to new people you meet at the hostel.

The easiest social move in any hostel: walk into the common room at dinner time and sit at the communal table. No opening line required. Food and proximity do the rest.

🚶 Get Out and Join Something

Sometimes the loneliness is coming from spending too much time in the hostel. A city has its own social ecosystem, and plugging into it is often easier than it looks.

Activities that naturally create connection:

• Free walking tours: you walk with a group for two to three hours, conversations happen organically, and it often ends at a bar. Almost every city has them.
• Parkrun: free 5km runs in parks every Saturday morning in over 22 countries. Friendly, low-pressure, a guaranteed way to interact with locals and fellow travellers.
• Cooking classes: small groups, a shared task, built-in conversation.
• Language exchanges: Meetup.com and local Facebook groups surface these in most cities. You meet locals, they practise English, you practise the local language, everyone gets something.
• Volunteer days: one-day volunteering opportunities organised by local NGOs create genuine connection through shared purpose.

The common thread: activities with a built-in structure make conversation inevitable rather than optional. You don’t have to be charismatic. You just have to be there.

📲 Apps and Tools for Meeting People on the Road

Beyond the Hostelworld app, a few other tools are genuinely useful for solo travellers looking to connect.

Meetup.com organises events around shared interests in cities worldwide. Hiking groups, language exchanges, board game nights, photography walks. Filter by city and browse what’s happening during your visit.

Couchsurfing Hangouts (the free, social feature rather than the hosting function) connects travellers and locals who want to meet up. It’s specifically designed for the “I’m in the city, who wants to explore?” moment.

Facebook travel groups for specific destinations (Backpackers in [City], Travellers in Southeast Asia, etc.) are active communities where people post about meetups, ask for company, and share itineraries. The barrier to posting is low and the response is usually fast.

Reddit travel communities (r/solotravel in particular) are warm, honest, and practical. The sub regularly has threads for travellers in specific cities looking to connect.

None of these replaces the immediacy of hostel social features, but they extend your reach into the city beyond the hostel walls.

💬 The Skill Nobody Talks About: Starting Conversations

Every solo traveller who is now a confident, connected traveller was once unsure how to start a conversation with a stranger. It’s a skill, not a personality type. It can be learned.

The good news: in a hostel, you never need an elaborate opener. The situation provides the context. Where are you from. How long have you been here. Where are you going next. These aren’t boring small talk questions in a hostel. They’re the actual substance of shared experience.

A few openers that actually work:

• “Is this seat taken?” followed by sitting and existing
• “Have you eaten anywhere good around here?” (food is universally safe territory)
• “Are you going to the hostel’s thing tonight?” (events give you an instant shared reference point)
• Simply asking for a recommendation and then staying to talk about it

The longer you wait to start talking to someone, the more significant the interaction feels in your head, and the harder it gets. The first conversation you have in a new hostel is almost always the most important one. Make it happen quickly, even briefly, and the rest gets easier.

🧠 When Loneliness Feels Like More Than Loneliness

This is worth saying clearly: there is a difference between the temporary loneliness of being new somewhere and a deeper feeling of disconnection, anxiety, or depression. Solo travel can bring up both, and they need different responses.

Temporary loneliness on the road usually resolves with activity, connection, and time. It responds to the practical steps in this guide. A good hostel, a city chat message, showing up for the group dinner.

But if the feeling is more persistent, if travel stops feeling exciting and starts feeling like running from something, if the loneliness feels heavier than the situation seems to warrant, it’s worth slowing down. Staying longer in one place, calling someone you trust at home, or speaking to a professional through a telehealth service are all valid responses.

Solo travel is not the cure for difficult mental states, and it’s not supposed to be. Going home earlier than planned is not a failure. A trip can be paused and resumed. Taking care of yourself is the priority.

✅ Final Thoughts: Connection Is Usually One Step Away

The loneliness that shows up in solo travel is temporary, normal, and genuinely addressable. Most of the time, it’s closer to the beginning than the end of a good story.

What actually works: staying in social hostels, using the Hostelworld app’s chat features before and during your stay, showing up for events, sitting at communal tables, asking one question, going for the walk. Small, consistent actions compound quickly into a web of connection that makes the solo part of solo travel feel like freedom rather than isolation.

The Social Pass is there for when you want to extend that connection beyond your hostel booking. The city chat is there for the moments when you want to know who else is in the city right now, thinking the same things you are.

You’re almost never as alone as you feel in the moment. The community is there. You just need to step into it.

Download the Hostelworld app to start booking now

❓ FAQs: Solo Travel and Loneliness