ABSTRACT
One of tourism’s hottest new trends is “solo travel,” where the search for singular, tailor-made experiences is located in an independent itinerary that entails doing exactly what one wants, on one’s own schedule. Although the desire to leave friends and family behind to enjoy a vacation alone (with Wi-Fi) may sound like the sort of self-focused behavior that supports concerns about growing alienation and individualism that initially accompanied the rise of digital media, this chapter demonstrates how solo travel is a developing form of mobile sociality. Through analysis of the hashtag #solotravel on Instagram and a highly interactive solo travel forum on Reddit, the chapter finds that traveling alone is packaged as a form of self-empowerment whose value is predicated on a) others knowing about and recognizing it, and b) the fact that solo-ness can be shared with others, by forming a community of people out there on their own, connected through media. By adopting similar stylistic representations of their solo travels, as well as liking, sharing, and posting supportive messages to one other, solo travel is social travel. In conclusion, this “hashtag sociality” is connected to the rise of consumption-based social practices that connect people through emerging lifestyle identities of a global middle class.
