Detours Gay Travel Blog
Gay Solo Travel: Two Travelers, 37 Years Apart
- Nov 10, 2026
Half of our travelers book their trips solo. Joining a gay travel group on your own comes with a few questions. Who else will be there? Will you fit in? Will a group of strangers feel like a group by the end?
We asked two solo travelers. Matthew is 32 and Ron is 69, but they agree on more than you might expect.
Meet Matthew and Ron
Matthew lives in Seattle. He's done three Detours trips: Italy, Scandinavia, and most recently Japan. For him, the appeal is simple. "Detours does the logistics and the thinking, so I get to go on an easy holiday."
Ron is an expat living in Mexico. He started traveling solo about 10 years ago, when he was easing out of work and his friends were still tied to theirs. "If I chose to travel with friends," he says, "I wouldn't travel as often."
He went looking for a company built around gay travelers, narrowed it down to Detours, and booked Thailand in 2018. "Once I went on my first trip, I was kinda hooked." He's now done 15 trips with us, with more already lined up.
Arriving solo
Both admit to some nerves before a trip starts. "There is a part of it that's a little bit worrying," Matthew says, "wondering who I'll meet and what it will be like."
On Ron's first trip, the worry was more specific. He knew there would be 15 strangers, but he wasn't sure how many of them were traveling as couples. As it turned out, it never came up. "The couple versus single dynamic wasn't even a thing," he says.
And settling in doesn't take long. Every trip opens with a welcome happy hour, and everyone already has something in common. "The group has a camaraderie that falls into place after just a few hours," Ron says. "And that happens time and time again."
Booking solo also means deciding on a room. You can pay a single supplement for a room of your own, or we'll pair you with a roommate, matched as closely as we can.
Traveling solo at any age
Matthew was 28 on his first trip, to Italy, and mostly stuck with the few others in their 30s. By Scandinavia and Japan, that had changed. "It was easy to make friends with people of any age," he says.
It helps that he's the youngest in a big family, used to being around people 10 to 20 years older. He's also clear about why he travels with Detours. "I'm not going on vacation to find a husband," he says, "but there's a certain level of community that's easy to appreciate from the beginning."
Ron turns 70 in June and has ended up in the same place from the other direction. "On any given trip, I might be closer to an older dynamic or a younger dynamic. It depends on the people." He says he still feels like he's in his 40s or 50s. As a single traveler well over 50, he's seen Detours work for people of almost any age.
Time to go your own way
The itinerary marks which days are more physically challenging, and those days usually come with an easier option. In Scandinavia, plenty of people were ready to dive into the water. "If people want to do everything, they can," Matthew says. "Age doesn't become a factor."
Ron admits he's independent and sometimes skips the plan altogether. He'll spend the afternoon doing something on his own and bring the story back to dinner. "Nobody feels weird or guilty about choosing not to do a group thing one day," he says. "And if there is something you'd rather do, the trip leader will help figure it out."
Somebody else does the thinking
When Matthew travels with his sister and her four kids, he's the one sorting out every step. "I'll need a vacation from a trip like that." With Detours, he says, "it feels like a vacation."
He saw it firsthand in Scandinavia, when the boat had an engine problem on a travel day. Some people panicked. "I didn't have to think about it, because Detours handles it," he says. "It took maybe 15 minutes, and our trip leader had alternative travel plans already figured out."
Japan, his first trip to Asia, was the same. "It's a different language, and I didn't have a clue." Brandon led the trip, with Andy, our newest trip leader, shadowing him to learn the role. Andy also speaks Japanese, which helped bridge the gap.
That extends to being gay in a new country. Matthew doesn't have to work out alone what that's like. "I trust they'll let me know if I need to know anything culturally," he says. In Rome, the group took a night walking tour where the guide covered the city's gay history alongside the usual stops.
Ron has watched trip leaders do this for years and doesn't envy them. "I've often said on these trips, I wouldn't want to have the trip leader job," he says. "You have 16 people and a massive number of expectations. They do an amazing job."
The people you keep running into
When Matthew arrived in Japan, one of the other travelers was someone he'd met in Scandinavia a few years earlier.
For Ron, that's normal. "Whenever I go on a Detours trip," he says, "it's rare that I don't know somebody from a previous trip."
He wasn’t on a recent 8 Days in Ecuador and the Galapagos departure, but he knew four people who were, and they kept him posted on WhatsApp. Barry and Michael, two friends he’d recommended to Detours years ago, sent a photo of themselves with two others he’s traveled with on several trips. Not long ago, someone else checked in from a dinner in Puerto Vallarta full of Detours alumni.
Next up for Ron: Southeast Asia with Mawari, our luxury sister brand, and a waitlist spot on Sicily and Malta in June, alongside a few friends he met on earlier trips.
"The community is what keeps bringing me back."