Flying solo: Journeys of self-discovery

Ting Lan, a white-collar young woman, travels alone to Yangshuo, the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region; Kaili, Guizhou province; and Sanya, Hainan province. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Women outnumbered men in solo trips. The wealthy are more likely to travel alone, the report shows.

A Tripadvisor.cn study puts the number of Chinese women who prefer to travel solo at 43 percent compared with 41 percent globally.

Agencies are responding.

Outbound-travel operator Beijing Utour International Travel Service Co worked with a dating website last year on a tour for singles to Indonesia's Bali.

"It took no time for the women's slots to be filled," Utour's publicity manager Li Mengran says.

The package was fully booked each of the three times it was offered, she says.

Some singles became couples by the trip's end, Li says.

Ting Lan, a white-collar young woman, travels alone to Yangshuo, the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region; Kaili, Guizhou province; and Sanya, Hainan province. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Bilingual video-blogger Maggie Wu hopes to inspire Chinese women.

Wu, who says she only travels independently of group tours－sometimes alone－believes English may be a barrier to many Chinese who'd otherwise go solo.

Individual travelers reach out in different ways, in every sense.

Ting started chatting with locals along the way.

"Everyone is a stranger when you travel alone. But that affords opportunities to make friends," the travel blogger says.

"You can follow your own itinerary or just see where it takes you. You don't need to negotiate with companies. They usually want to go there and do this, but you don't."

But the other side of solo travelers' aversion to agencies is it makes their treks harder to track. Big data plays a smaller role in measuring how many people are traveling alone and how.