1.

Introduction

This Research proposal is based on Solo travel. In today’s world changing lifestyle and
demographics has led to people preferring to travel solo. As it is growing trend in the tourism
industry. The number of solo traveler is increasing rapidly and female solo traveler is leading the
way.

1.1 Research Aim

This research aim to find out how the solo traveler are motivated to travel alone for their
holidays.
1.2 Background of the study
The increasing number of solo traveler have led to growing market in tourism industry.
As many people are traveling solo. This study is about the solo travel and how people are
being motivated to travel alone. This is the exploratory research and focuses on
understanding the motivation for the solo travel. For the research method qualitative
method is used for the study and both the data collection method is used for collection of
data. It is further broken down in in-depth and focus group. In sampling non-probability
is used and under it purposive sampling is done.

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2. Literature Review

Some of the more experienced travelers in the world also said that traveling alone is the perfect 
way to challenge yourself and see the world but in reality it may not work that way. There are
many risk while travelling solo the world can be dangerous place, particularly if you’re in
another state, you don’t know anybody there and you can’t speak the language and be in an
emergency. (The Argus 2017). People who go somewhere alone and spend a good amount of
time alone on a destination is known as solo traveling. Ever wondered why some people are
looking forward to a solo trip it’s not because they are alone or doesn’t have people to travel with
them in fact truth is different. As per the recent study in the International Journal of Tourism
Research it confirms that solo travelers are actually really fun-loving people who want to have
fun all by themselves. Solo passengers don't go by themselves because they've got to. The
Queensland University of Technology (QUT) staff said they do it because they want to. There
was a growing number of people who enjoyed it, according to lead researcher C Bianchi.
Nonetheless, research shows that solo travel is one of the fast growing part of tourism, and
statistics confirms this with significantly increasing numbers (The Economics Times 2015). Solo
traveling is an increasing trend in tourism industry.

According to (Yang et.al 2019) there is a trend in Southeast Asia with 79% of women planning
to travel alone and in 2015, 48% of Southeast Asian women had actually taken a solo holiday, an
increase from 36% in 2014. According to Google Trends 2019 that searches for “solo female
traveler” has increased by 500 percent since 2009, with highest search data coming from south
Asia. Within the solo traveler market, women have been identified as strong growing trend
compared to male travelers.

The motivation for solo traveler were uncompromising fun, change in lifestyle and also to
experience to travel alone. According to survey many people want to meet other people for their
travel experience this way they can socialize. Also while traveling alone you get the feeling of
being free and do whatever you want. The traveler can enjoy themselves and their won’t be any

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rules and do whatever with their time. All this things contributed to motivation for solo travel
(The Economic Times 2015).

Solo Travel Society Facebook group has approximately 250,000 members, 63% are female.
Klook, a travel booking platform based in Hong Kong, listed solo travel as its top trend in 2019,
noting that the number of go-it-alone travelers using its services grew from 31% in 2017 to 38%
last year. Chinese millennial are among the most intrepid, with nearly 60% rejecting all-inclusive
group trips in favor of adventure on their own, and women are leading the way (South China
Morning Post 2019). There has been an impressive 350 % increase in women looking for solo
travel options, according to the data. Southeast Asia has shown vast interest in traveling alone
and in 2016 it was rated as the most popular activities for Asian travelers.

As there is a growing market for solo traveling, many tour operators and travel companies are
full filling the need of solo travelers. The companies are offering solo packages which suits the
lifestyle and the budget of the solo traveler (Brown 2018). While travel companies are looking
for new ways to grow their market, they are increasingly creating special packages for the
individual travelers. Intrepid Travel which specializes in path tours introduced unique trips to
Peru and Nepal where travelers do not have to pay for the usual single-supplement fee that helps
to make up for the difference in price charged to two travelers sharing a room whereas Absolute
Travel introduced Adventure Women where the single traveler who would want some company
but didn’t want to travel on group tour where being paired with likeminded companion and given
itinerary which both would enjoy (Higgins2007). The traveler are having more options these
days and tour companies are providing attractive packages for the solo traveler.

There are certain things a solo traveler must follow for the safe trip especially the female solo
traveler must be extra careful and follow certain guides such as making sure their destination is
safe, telling close one about current location and it is important to learn the local culture which
would help the traveler for safe journey (Adio 2017).This way solo traveler can be extra careful
about their environment. These tips will guide them in new destination where they are all alone.
Care precaution must be take while traveling alone. As per (Hindustan Times 2018) many
nations are fairly safe for women, including many countries in Eastern Europe. The destination
are becoming safe for women to travel as many travel company offer trips solely aimed at
women with tools like Google etc., women can eliminate the need for annoying people or local

3
assistance. They can also inform their family, where they are, who they are with and whether
they need help. Safety is also a major concern while travelling solo as you will be on your own
and there might be some risk associated with it. All the necessary steps, precaution should be
taken for safety of the traveler.

Methodology
According to Yang et.al 2019 and Wilson they both have research on the similar topic which is
solo traveling as the topic itself is in exploratory research they have used qualitative method so
the study will be also using qualitative method for this research.Futhermore researcher has used
in-depth analysis of the data and has also applied focus group tool for further need of data.

There are two research method a researcher can use while conducting research, which are
Qualitative and Quantitative. However they can also mix these method to get the clear
understanding of the topic (Fisher 2010). Qualitative research is an exploratory research it
focuses on obtaining data through understanding of opinion and underlying reasons. This data
can be observed and recorded whereas Quantitative research is done in numbers and graphs, it
focuses on testing theories through facts and statistical data. It can be used to form generalizable
facts about the topic (Saunders et al. 2016).The approaches for two methods are inductive and
deductive theory respectively. In inductive theory it aims for the development of theory, then the
possible reasoning is drawn and the conclusion is derived from the data whereas deductive
theory aims at testing an existing theory, the hypothesis is drawn and facts and number decides
the possible logical conclusion. (Brunt 2017).

Multiple reasons could be drawn out why qualitative method is more feasible than quantitative
method. One leading reason that would justify the why is research question. As according to the
question the sole aim of the researcher is to explore the motivation of individuals choosing to
travel alone for their holidays. Following on this qualitative method is concerned with
understanding the human behavior from the participant’s point of view, it studies in their natural
setting trying to understand and make sense which provides rich and detailed data whereas
quantitative is related to discover how and how many and provides number and logical data
which would be not feasible for the study. The criteria for choosing this method were the
researcher needed rich data according to the topic, the theory needed to be developed by possible

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reasoning, by doing in-depth interview of the solo traveler furthermore the researcher should
have unstructured questionnaire where the probing can be done and various data could be
collected. Therefore best method for this topic would be the Qualitative method (Saldana et al.
2011).

As the Qualitative, inductive research method was viewed to be most viable, given the
exploratory, socio-psychological nature of the study. It answers how and why of the related topic
creating relation between trends, data and by deriving the conclusion with the given data. The
advantages of Qualitative data is they provide rich information and it does not have limitation as
in Qualitative data, if the researcher does not get desired answer they can add context which the
number alone might not give. It is more flexible in nature as it is based on human behavior and
observation. The limitation for Qualitative method is it is time consuming for the researcher to
organize interviews, manage focus groups which is costly for this method. Furthermore the
researcher might alter the data according to their desired result and the results that are obtained
might be difficult to present. There might also be the chances that the data collected might
produce artificial results and researcher might include personal bias while collecting data
(Saunders et.al 2015)

Methods
As per Yang et.al 2019 the researcher has performed its research in this manner so as per that I
will be also using the same methods they have conducted on similar topic.

There are different methods that can be used in Qualitative research. From the research question,
the research will collect data in two way which are primary and secondary data. This data
method collection will guide us on collection data as per research topic (Saldana et.al 2011).The
primary data are the first hand data, the researcher will conduct in-depth interview will engage in
focus group also the questionnaire will be prepared to gain insight on the topic where the
respondent can answer the question. The second hand information that are collected by other
people for their research purpose is known as secondary data as this research will also use
secondary data that are easily available inform of books, article, libraries and internet
sources.Futhermore the research will not be limited to single data collection method as it will be
implementing both primary and secondary technique (Brunt et.al 2017).

5
In primary data collection, in-depth interview will be the appropriate as it is also the most
common form of data collection in qualitative research method because it provides rich data
through small number of participant. While doing in-depth interview the research can know
about the reason, their behavior and also they can probe the answer to get more detailed answer
for the topic. The open ended question would be asked as the participant can take part in
discussion and justify their answer (Saldana et.al 2011a).Also semi structured question can be
also used which is mix of structured and unstructured in return provides more flexibility and
their sequence can be per determined (Fisher 2010a).

However Focus group discussion involves gathering of people from similar background where
they discuss about the topic of interest and opinion (Houliez et.al 2012). The focus group is
difficult to organize and is time consuming. According to (Brunt et.al 2017) focus group has
small number of participant consisting of 6-10 people. The moderator starts the discussion and
evaluates them. It is useful for finding facts and gives live information and also helps to analyze
human behavior. It has also some drawbacks such as due to large quantity of information it is
difficult to analyze and it is also difficult to gather people and it is difficult to control.

The way of collecting data through interview, speech and writing them in recorded form is
known as transcribing. For Qualitative study transcribing is really important as the data are
collected in form of interviews and written for further reference. It is hectic to transcribe data of
qualitative method (Saunders et.al 2016).

As there will be tremendous amount of data, the data that are obtained will not be wholly used
and it needs to be filtered. For that purpose the coding will be used for data analysis. Coding
helps us to organize raw data and label them and compile them (Saunders et.al 2016).

Sampling
As the studying whole population would be not feasible as it would be expensive, time
consuming and difficult for the study. Therefore rather studying the whole population, the
researcher will select certain part of population for the study. This process of choosing is known
as sampling as it is manageable and will be in order (Harission 2013).

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There are two types of sampling Probability and Non-Probability. In probability sampling
process, random representatives are chosen from a population where there are very minimum
selection criteria to be met so there will be the possibility of being selected in sample. Whereas
in non-probability, there is no chance of being selected in sample size. Many sampling are there
in these two sampling which can be further broken down, In probability there are simple random
sampling, systematic, stratified and clustered samplings and there are convenience, judgmental,
quota and snowball sampling in non-probability samplings (Saunders et.al 2016)

For this research the researcher will be applying non probability sampling technique further it
will use purposive sampling process. To achieve the varied result the sample size will consist of
10 people. In purposive sampling the participants are selected on the basis of their knowledge of
the study. The people who have gone for solo traveler in their life will be selected as they can
give rich information about the study also about the experience of their travel. In this way the
study can get desired information about the topic.

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