Every year you tell us what you want more of on Solo Traveler and every year a new adventure begins as we try to meet your needs, have fun and travel solo!
You are amazing!
We received 1004 responses to our 2017 Reader Survey. That's a huge number!
We really appreciate you taking the time to give us your feedback because we are a small team and we have to use our time wisely. With your help, we can.
Based on feedback in previous years, we identify our three priorities as:
- Inspiration
- Information
- Advocacy
We try to make sure that every decision we make, every post we publish and every project we take on serves at least one of these priorities. This year's Reader Survey will help us fine tune our work in an effort to deliver what you need.
Knowing More Helps Us Help You
In past years the survey was a mere 10 questions long. This year we expanded it to 26 questions and so many of you hung in there right to the end giving us lots of information to work with.
Thank you!
One of the reasons for the more detailed questions was to help us with our advocacy role. The better we know you the more companies we can convince to treat solo travelers well. This, after all, is our mission. It was the rationale behind the Solo Travel Awards and why we publish the Solo Travel Deals page and mail the Deals Advisory (sign up in the green bar above) every month.
I'll be publishing a post on the statistics and demographics of solo travelers soon but this post is all about you – what you want more of from us.
What You Want From Us at Solo Traveler
The kind of articles you want more of. We gave you four choices and you ranked them in this order.
- How-to advice
- Money-wise advice
- Safety advice
- Inspirational stories
Of course, we'll continue to provide a wide range of posts on all topics on Solo Traveler but it is helpful to know what you want most.
This almost lines up with another question we asked.
What prevents you from traveling more? Here's how the choices we gave you ranked.
- Money
- Time
- Responsibilities
- I travel as much as I want
- Inexperience
So money continues to be the big barrier to more travel with time and responsibilities being close on their heals. But it was great to see that almost 10% of you travel as much as they want.
Your suggestions for improving Solo Traveler. Here's what you had to say.
- I want the page to post more photos of a city just to inspire people!
- More about going off the beaten path.
- Include more US cities and towns.
- Eco-travel
- Encourage story-sharing via Instagram.
- Videos
- Maybe there could more comprehensive itineraries of offbeat locations… or hidden gems in mainstream tourist locations…
- More travel guides for cities! I love those.
- Ethical travel
- Travel book reviews
- Easy lists of what to do at destinations
- Travel products – value (price and quality) esp. walking shoes (comfort, weather), clothing, love getting hints, info/how and what to do/not do.
- Extracts and teasers such as Facebook posts and also on the blog posts key learning points to allow you to enjoy the site even when having limited time.
- More LGBTQ topics
- How to get past language barriers
- Publish the ugly side of solo travel as well as the good. As an independent traveler I know it’s not all rainbows and unicorns out there and the world can be a dodgy place
- More articles from a wider range of people we meet
- More opportunities to highlight followers and give exposure to our readers’
- Be inclusive. To much focus on solo women travelers. Include concerns for gay travelers’ safety and inclusivity.
How you engage with Solo Traveler: These are the top four ways that people engage with the information we share.
- You're a member of the Solo Travel Society on Facebook.
- You comment on the site
- You share posts on the site with friends.
- You forward Solo Traveler emails with friends.
Thanks for all your interaction. Every time you do we get a better feel for the community and new ideas for what we should do next.
You Gave Me Shivers
Sometimes we're helpful to you. Just as often, perhaps more often, it's members of the Solo Traveler community that deliver the information and inspiration you need. Either way, we're happy you have been helped.
When we opened up a question for you to say anything you wanted, you had some suggestions and also many kind words, some of which gave me shivers. Here they are, in italics are my responses.
- My first trip was to Elephant Nature Park, in Thailand. An idea from one of your followers. – I love how readers support each other, even without knowing it.
- LOVE you guys and ALL you do! Thank you! My gratitude cannot be expressed in words. – Wow. Thanks!
- More is better, to make solo travel an accepted mainstream activity rather than an aberration. – That's part of our mission! 🙂
- Your site is very helpful for some of my research – but wish there was more information on options that meet my budget constraints; tours geared to single travelers mainly. – We'll keep working on it. We want to make solo travel affordable for all.
- I find the Solo Travel website encouraging and inspirational. – We're glad because that's exactly what we want to achieve.
- I love that articles on the site are updated. Would love more FB interaction posts i.e. questions for travelers to answer. Answers from the community are great. Good idea!
- I read your emails religiously and your blog posts, but I never thought to look for your Instagram or Pinterest accounts. Maybe adding links to the bottom of your emails would help spread the word on your other social media accounts? Otherwise, thank you again for being the best location for solo travel confidence and deals! – Great idea. Thanks!
- Keep rocking it! – We will!
And Sometimes You Made Me Smile
We won't be able to satisfy everyone's needs. There are just too many opinions out there. For example, these two comments on improving the site came one after the other.
- Less focus on being a travel agent (i.e deals) and more on the travel experience.
- Lots of special deals, offers please.
Yes, our reality is that we'll be able to please some of you all of the time and all of you some of the time. But please be assured, we'll keep trying.
Thanks from all of us at Solo Traveler,
Tracey, Simon, and Janice
