✈️ How we design our itineraries + Busiest air passenger routes

Hi Reader,

We said goodbye to August and we are starting September in full swing with the preparations of all the tours we have in the fall and winter season.

This involves many calls with our guides and local partners, collecting details about all the guest traveling with us, finalising logistics of the tours, and so much more.

After a relatively quiet summer, things are going back busy-mode, and it's both energizing and exciting!

📩 On this week's email:

Have you ever wondered how we design our itineraries? This week I am revealing all that goes on behind the scenes before a tour goes live on the website
The busiest air passenger routes in the world
Check out the last spots available on this year's tours and a discount of $300 / 300 EUR on some of these!

How we design our tours

Hours of work are poured into designing every new itinerary.

It all starts with an idea and ends with an email and, in between those two days, there are between 18 and 24 months of video calls, more emails, messages and a trip. That's right, it takes up to 2 years for a tour to be ready to launch.

This is because we do a lot of research and due diligence before I travel to scout the destination in person, and we like to launch trips with a minimum of one year notice.

So here is everything that happens before a tour is live.

Inception

Like most companies, we have a business plan with a 5-year view on the business which we usually review twice a year.

This plan has a list of destinations we want to focus on, and serves as a guidance, but is not set in stone.

Many of the trips we have launched were not in this list, but we decided to focus on the destination because we saw an opportunity to offer a trip that fully supported women as is the case in Oaxaca.

We pick destinations based on their potential / interest as well as our ability to support our mission of empowering women.

If we know a destination will be popular but we cannot put together an itinerary that will support women-owned businesses, we discard the idea.

Carpets in the historical center of Tbilisi

Likewise, if the option to offer a destination that was not in our plans comes up in a way that is 100% female led, we consider its appeal and decide whether to include it in our portfolio or not. This happened with Georgia and the Swedish Arctic.

We never started Solo Female Travelers to make money, it was never about the business opportunity. We started because we wanted to help women travel solo while providing employment to women around the world and helping shape the travel industry to be more equitable for women.

As a result, profits or return on investment are not metrics that define whether we will offer a destination or not, instead, it is the potential impact a trip may have that guides our decisions.

Planning

After we decide on a destination, the planning phase starts.

We research what a potential itinerary could look like, we find possible hotels, restaurants, activities, guides, etc. and start collating all the options in a spreadsheet.

Once we have a long list, we narrow it down to a short list of feasible options that match our mission: Female and locally owned, sustainable and responsible, unique and exclusive, and premium.

With a short list ready, we start to reach out to businesses to find out availability, prices, their ability to adapt what they do to our needs, etc.

Lots of emails, video and phone calls follow, and we update our sheets with the info we receive. A possible itinerary starts to take shape, with alternatives and plan Bs.

There are some components that need to be part of every tour:

Luxury and unique hotel stays, because I love great hotels and it's part of our DNA to pamper our guests a little with a property that makes them go wow on every tour.

Gastronomy, be it in the shape of a cooking class or demonstration, a food tour, a foraging walk, a talk to a food expert, and lots of meals that showcase what is traditional and special about the destination. I believe food is very important when we travel, so it always features prominently on our tours. I also look for wineries, distilleries and other drink-related experiences that are typical of the destination. For example, we learn to make jamu elixir in Bali, we go on a foraging and pasta making class in Amalfi, we visit many natural wineries in Georgia, we make a paella in Barcelona, we find out how to cook lava bread in Iceland, we visit a cheese farm in Tuscany, we go on a coffee and graffiti walking tour in Melbourne, we make mole and rainbow tortillas in Oaxaca, we join a walking food tour in Old Cairo, we tour a whiskey distillery in Scotland, etc.

Some physical activity, because with all the great food we eat, a bit of exercise is always welcome, plus there is a lot of nature to explore and many outdoor experiences that require some walking, hiking, kayaking, sailing, etc. For example, we hike in the Scottish Highlands, we go dog sledding and snowmobiling in the Arctic, we snorkel and kayak in the Galapagos, we go for forest walks in the Amazon, we walk around Uluru, in Australia, at sunrise, we hike to waterfalls in Bali, etc.

Incredible women doing amazing things that inspire us and brighten our days. This is the secret ingredient of every tour. At the end of every tour, I know guests will not remember the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, the Duomo in Florence or even the Northern Lights in Sweden or Iceland, I know that the women they met is what they will remember most and these memories they will treasure for years to come.

Scouting

In parallel to the planning phase, I start to block my calendar for a scouting trip at the same time of year that we will offer the tour.

For example, my 2026 is already full until the summer with scouting trips for 2027 tours. It was the same this year, when I was busy until the summer.

We plan the scouting trip itinerary as we plan the trip, even though they are different because I visit many more places that don't make it into the final program during my scouting.

For example, I may visit 3 hotels to see which one I prefer. I will meet with several guides to select the best one for our groups. Or I may participate in several activities to see which one would be best.

My schedule during the scouting trip is busier than the final program we offer, as I don't leave any free time.

But there is time for serendipity or for discovering people or places that were not on our spreadsheet and that are recommended by the many people I mean while there. There is also time for some selfies...

Everyone I meet gets asked about women doing interesting things, and there are many businesses that we find this way, through referrals and recommendations.

A lot of my in-destination time is spent talking to women, learning more about them, hearing their worries and challenges and how their destinations have changed. We put all this into the mix too.

I spend between 10 days and 2 weeks at the destination. In many cases, I have already been there before, so I may be familiar with some parts and I can revisit some quicker.

For example, of all the trips we have launched, only Georgia, Oaxaca, Antarctica, Ecuador, Galapagos and the Swedish Arctic were destinations I was visiting for the first time when scouting the trip; In contrast, I had been to Bali, Japan, Italy, Iceland, and Greece multiple times before we decided to launch a tour.

During my scouting, I also share Instagram stories about the trip so those on the waitlist can take a look behind the scenes.

Preparation and launch

Some of the photos from Anguilla, part of our Caribbean sailing trip

When I return from my scouting trip, I usually have a pretty good idea of the final itinerary, and many photos and videos of the trip.

To finalise it, it is just a matter of discussing it with Meg to get her opinion, getting prices and quotations from all partners involved and confirming that it all works out with the many pieces of the puzzle (hotels, transportation, opening times, distances, restaurants, guides, etc.).

I upload our videos and photos for the team to edit the best ones and put together a video recap of the trip.

I also handover all the logistics details to my team so they can take over on making it all happen, follow up on bookings and payments, etc. until the trip takes place.

We make final decisions and set dates and prices for the tour and in parallel, prepare all the materials to make it live on the website and on social media.

Each tour is added to the website's menu, has an itinerary page with photos, a highlights video and the booking and payment details.

I personally write every tour page with the details of what we will do and what makes our trip special. Once the photos have been edited, I add them in, along with the video.

We use an online booking system to collect reservations and that needs to be set up too. There are many other admin tasks that need to be completed for the tour to go live which I won't bore you with, and finally, we decide on a launch date.

We don't launch a tour without having confirmed availability at all the hotels, restaurants and activities, and with the guide.

We never launch a tour with a placeholder or a generic "this hotel or one of similar category" or "a 4 star hotel", because no two hotels are the same and we are very particular about the places we choose to stay at.

There are times when we have had to make changes, sometimes beyond out control, other times because we have decided to upgrade a hotel to a new one or because the one we used to stay at has declined in quality, but we always communicate this.

When the trip is ready to go live, we add it to the website and tell everyone on the waitlist. Some trips like the Swedish Arctic or Ecuador + Galapagos almost sold out with the waitlist, so it pays to join if you are interested in any of our new destinations.

A week after we announce it to the waitlist, we tell everyone else and share it on our Instagram and Facebook pages too.

We then typically need to wait for almost a year for the trip to go live since we like to launch new destinations with a year's notice.

As you can see, every tour requires 18 to 24 months of work behind the scenes. Dozens of hours of video calls, hundreds of emails, dozens of hours of research and an in person visit by me.

On occasion I have scouted a destination with Meg (Bali) or with Stella (the Xmas markets), but I typically do this solo.

This is why our tours are so similar in style and why if you enjoyed a tour, you can be sure that the next one will feel similar, because they are all designed by me and based on how I like to travel.

Itineraries always vary, because we adapt them to the destination, but they all include great hotels, immersive experiences, lots of local flavor (no fake photoshoot with us!), women doing great things, and whatever makes the destination special.

Busiest air passenger travel routes

IATA, the International Air Transport Association, publishes annual statistics on the industry that I always find super interesting.

The busiest routes per continent are: Jeju - Seoul (13 mil), Bogota-Medellin (3.8 mil), Cape Town-Johannesburg (3.3 mil), New York-Los Angeles (2.2 mil), Barcelona-Palma de Mallorca (2 mil).
The most commonly used aircraft: Bopeing 737.
The biggest passenger markets (number of passengers departing or arriving in each country): US (876 mil), China (741 mil), UK (261 mil) and Spain (241 mil).

Last spots for 2025 + 300 USD / EUR discount

Harbour Bridge views from our hotel in Sydney

Still on time to travel with us this year:

🔔 1 SPOT opened up on our Morocco tour 6 to 16 November => BOOK MOROCCO ** GET 300 EUR off **
🔔 3 SPOTS left on our Oaxaca 12 to 18 October tour (📸 photographer onboard) and 3 SPOTS left on our 9 to 15 November tour => BOOK OAXACA ** GET 300 EUR off **
🔔 2 SPOTS left on our Xmas markets tour 22 to 29 November => BOOK XMAS MARKETS
🔔 4 SPOTS left on our Cuba tour for New Year's Eve, the celebration you needed! => BOOK CUBA ** GET 300 EUR off **