One of Viaggio da Sola Perché’s aims is to make the idea of solo travel more accessible to women. This also means offering advice and information as to how to organise and experience the trip, if possible, on a small budget. We can all plan and experience a trip on our own: all that is necessary is a bit of time to plan it, and the energy to research your destination online.
If you need ideas on where to start, or you need some extra information, here is a section of websites you can look up when you get ready for your next trip, step by step. Our list includes all sorts of nifty stuff, from information on what travel documents you might need, to ways to find volunteering and work opportunities while travelling.
Resources for solo travellers list
- Travel planning
- Transfers
- Accomodation
- Hospitality and voluntary work
- Digital nomad lifestyle – Work wherever you are
- Travels and spiritual paths
- Tools, websites, and apps for safety and sociability traveling
Travel planning
Wikitravel: the Wikipedia of travelling, a free worldwide travel guide freely edited by anyone who is willing to do that.
Wikivoyage: is the free worldwide travel guide that anyone can edit.
Lonely Planet PDF Guides: the Lonely Planet website where, apart from finding many travel tips, you can buy the pdf files of the guides, that is to say cheaper purchase.
Rough Guides: Rough Guides website. It gives many advices on various countries to visit.
e-Dreams: a website where to find the best flights deals and travel planning.
Travelfish: independent online guide for Southeast Asia.
TripAdvisor: the world’s largest web portal containing reviews of places to visit, hotels, restaurants, pubs, discos, spas and whatever can be reviewed. It also has forums and blogs where to ask for travel advices.
SlowTravel: a community of people who love travelling slow, as a travel philosophy, and who offers tips and travel opportunities.
WEP: is an international organization that promotes cultural exchange for the purpose of personal growth and linguistic improvement. It works in 6 continents, 65 countries and with 20 different languages.
No Problem Flights: a service runned by professionals and skilled workers in the transport and tourism sectors that help with the ticket refund in case of problems with the flight you have booked (italian).
Fights Report: website with thousands of flight companies reviews and lots of deals for low-cost flights.
Air Help: Air Help helps travelers to discover if they’re entitled to have a reimbursement in case of delayed, deleted or overbooking flight.
Numbeo: if you are about to move to another country, this a useful website to check and compare cost of living, healthcare, crime and traffic in the city or area you are moving or traveling.
Medical Learning Library: a helpful list of medical insurance requirements and travel visas divided by Country.
Xe.com: the world’s trusted currency authority (app for smartphone available)
Transfers
Skyscanner: a travel search engine which compares different flights and finds the lowest price.
Hopper: is a smartphone app that locates and identifies the best airfares for selected routes, estimates how much the prices could increase or fall in the next few months and it is possible to activate notifications to receive alert when prices are cheaper for your saved routes.
Kiwi: a travel search engine which find low-cost flights world wide.
Goeuro: a web portal where you will find the lowest prices for travelling by air, train, bus and car in Europe.
Trainline: is a one-stop shop for train and coach travel. Every day they bring together routes, fares and journey times from more than 190 train and coach companies in 44 countries so customers can easily buy tickets and save time, hassle or money.
Wanderio: a web application that provides the best transport solutions to go from point to point. On the same platform, travelers can seamlessly compare, combine and book tickets for trains, flights, buses and airport transfers.
Best Onward Ticket: is a Flight Ticket Rental Service. They provide you with international flight tickets to use as proof of onward travel plans when you travel abroad.
The Man in Seat Sixty-One: a web portal where you will find the lowest prices for travelling by air, train, bus and car in Europe.
Rome2Rio: a travel search engine which finds you all the possible routes by train, bus or plane even combined, to and from any destination.
Virail: is a platform (app and website) that compares all available routes for your trip, showing all the travel options by plane, train, bus and carpooling, both in Europe and in the rest of the world.
Destigogo: search engine that cross-check data about the departure city, total budget, total available days and travel needs and find destinations that perfectly fit the budget.
RailEurope: a web portal for buying train tickets in Europe.
Interrail.eu: here you can find all the information and book Interrail travels in Europe.
Busabout: Busabout organizes hop-on hop-off trip by bus in Europe, Asia, Uk and Morocco, where is possible to visit different places in the same tour.
Megabus: low-cost bus company.
Flixbus: Low-Cost bus company that connect Europe cities with each other.
Trivabus: website that sells tickets for bus trips with no passengers, starting from 0,99€. It’s an italian stratup.
BlaBlaCar: community of drivers and passengers to find or offer car rides.
Cooltra Motos: scooter rental company with more than 100 rental points in Europe. Cooltra offers short and long term scooter rental services. A new, cool, safe and funny way to move all around the city that hosts you.
EasyTerra: search engine that compare offers of the most popular car rental companies on your behalf.
Kayak cars: a search engine for everything related to travel bookings and useful for car renting.
Travelbike.it: large community of moto tourism.
HitchWiki: website containing information and advices about moving by hitchhiking.
Accomodation
Airbnb: web portal which connects travellers to those individuals wishing to rent accommodation or a place for short periods.
Booking.com: search engine suitable to find hotels and hostels all over the world.
Agoda: a search engine similar to Booking.
Hostelworld: a search engine specialized in hostels.
Hostelbookers: a search engine specialized in hostels.
HostelsClub: a search engine specialized in hostels all over the world.
HomeExchange.com: a site specialized in home and apartments swapping, which allows people to exchange their own and stay in each others’s homes for the travel period.
GuestToGuest: a site specialized in home, apartments and rooms swapping, which allows people to exchange their own and stay in each others’s homes for the travel period with a GuestPoints system that can be earned every time they change their house.
Beroomers: Beroomers is the global mid-term housing marketplace for students and young professionals. Find your room, flat or student hall and match with your next roomers.
The Guide to Sleeping in Airports: site which provides information on how to sleep in airports all over the world.
HomeToGo: is the world’s largest search engine for holiday accommodation.
Wimdu: very similar to AirBnB. A place to find cheap accomodation in home and apartments.
Hospitality and voluntary work
Couchsurfing: huge and famous worldwide community of hospitality exchange.
Nightswapping: collaborative platform in the tourism sector. There is no exchange of money between members of the community: every time a host guests a traveler, gains nights to be hosted free of charge at the home of another host.
Hospitality Club: network alternative to Couchsurfing although not as large.
Host a sister: is a Facebook group created exclusively for girls around the world either looking for a safe place to stay or to share their space with other girls. It is intended to be a cultural exchange between sisters around the world.
Home Stays: stay with a local and book a room anywhere in the world, to live your travel as a local person.
Be Welcome: Be Welcome is a not-for-profit, open source, and exclusively run by members community where it’s possible to find and guest travelers from all over the world.
MindMyHouse: homesitting site which offers the opportunity to stay for free at other people places when they are away in exchange for small houseworks.
Trusted Housesitters: this website connects home and pet owners who need a sitter, when going away, with trustworthy people who are happy to sit for free.
GoCambio: network that connects guests who wish to learn or improve a language with other travelers that can offer these kinds of skills in exchange for hospitality.
Talk Talk Bnb: the purpose of this network is to putting people who want to learn languages in touch with people who want to travel the worl. They offer a clever alternative to traditional accommodation, while by helping hosts learn a language
Workaway: a place where low budget travellers can find a job in exchange of accomodation.
Help Exchange: similar to Workaway, is a community where every traveller can find a job in exchange of accomodation.
Bed&Learn: it puts into contact people who offer hospitality in exchange for some languages lessons, gardening, cooking…there are unlimited possibilities of learning and hosting.
Wwoof: organization which connects travellers interested in working in organic farms in exchange for room and board.
AuPairWorld: au pair job agency for families needing babysitting.
Gapyear.com: community of backpackers which are on their year off travel, offering various tips on trip planning, accommodation and travelling as well as volunteering or work offers.
Gapforce: Gapforce organizes unique, exciting gap year and overseas volunteer projects that enable young people to become global citizens and travel all over the world.
Volunteer World: Volunteer World connects readers with more than 1.000 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in 80+ countries in fields as environmental and marine conservation, teaching/education/school psychology, medical internships, animal & wildlife research and many more… Their mission has always been to ensure fairness, independence and high quality within the meaningful travel industry.
Scambieuropei: web portal for youth mobility in Europe where you can find different kinds of news (job, internship, Leonardo programme etc.) and cultural exchanges (Italian).
International Civil Service: Association specialized in the fields of volunteering abroad in the medium and long term (Italian).
Worldpackers: explore the world and be hosted in exchange for some hours of work. The searching is divided into categories based on interests areas.
My Global Welcome: network that connects people who want to go abroad, both as travelers as immigrants, with fellow countryman who are already in place.
Warm Showers: a free and international network for hospitality exchange among bycicle tourists.
Digital nomad lifestyle – Work wherever you are
UpWork: popular platform which mediates between clients and freelancers. Most of the ads come from US companies. Free registration with the possibility of verifying your profile by purchasing the dedicated service.
Freelancer: a very popular network among digital nomads, alternative to UpWork.
People Per Hour: very similar to Freelancer and UpWork. It’s a platform, used especially to find clients all over the world.
Fiverr: is an online marketplace offering tasks and services. The site is used by freelancers who use it to offer services to customers worldwide. In this case the clients are who look for freelancers not the opposite.
Travels and spiritual paths
My Ideal Traveling: spiritual paths all over the world, customized and totally organized according to travellers needs.
The Travel Yogi: a community for travellers looking for their spiritual path, that organizes adventures and retreats all over the world.
Pellegrinando: the European pilgrimages website, helps in the organization and tells the story of pilgrimages (italian).
Tools, websites, and apps for safety and sociability traveling
B-Responsible: was born with a rather ambitious Mission: to provide advice and training in the field of personal security (private and professional). B-Responsible is about concrete and simple rules of behaviour: lifestyles, if you will, which make us less vulnerable and more prepared in dangerous situations. In other words, B-Responsible is about Self-Protection, a term coined by Dr. Mario Carotenuto, head of the Consultancy and Training Division of the company.
Dynameet: is an application that allows travelers to train and practice their favorite sport with other people, anywhere in the world.
Wher: is an application for women made by women that collects the safest and most popular cities areas according to the times of the day (Italian language).
Meetup: network created in order to connect and bring together groups of people worldwide. It’s a good way to make friends when you arrive in a new place.
EatWith: network dedicated to “social” dinners where you can book a dinner at anyone’s home who has registered as a chef and then host. Dedicated to those who want to meet new people and the local cuisine.
Meal Sharing: Meal Sharing brings people together over home cooked meals. Our mission is to build communities through shared resources, facilitate deeper cultural exchange, and encourage people to cook at home to enable a healthier lifestyle..
Expatclic: community of expatriate women who support each other and support other women who would like to follow their example.
U2Guide: created by 2 humanitarian activists, this is a network which put travellers in contact with local guides and fund social projects where people go.
Evensi: isa a network created in order to share cultural events around the world, workshops, meetings, exhibitions, conferences, tours, etc … created directly by their organizers and promoted within the site.
