Solo Women Travelers Over 50 in the United States: A Demographic Analysis of RV Travel and Workamping (Free PDF Report)

Approximately 32 million American women are aged 55 or older. Around 21 million of them travel solo.

That is a $214 billion market today, projected to reach $363 billion by 2035, and almost nobody is designing for it.

This report assembles the available demographic evidence on solo women travelers over 50 in the United States, with particular attention to RV travel, camping, and workamping on public lands. It is written for anyone who needs the numbers: agencies, product teams, journalists, researchers, and the women themselves, who are routinely told they are an anomaly and are not.

Selected findings:

• 67% of travelers in the United States are female, and 40% of those are women over 55
• Among older adult travel programs, roughly 85% of solo travelers are women
• Google searches for solo female travel increased more than elevenfold between 2011 and 2024
• At least 60% of one major program's solo travelers were married and traveling without a spouse
• Of solo female travelers over 50, roughly 30% are divorced or separated, 19% widowed, and 16% never married
• Nearly half hold college degrees and 40% hold advanced degrees
• Among affluent travelers earning over $250,000 annually, 54% are women

The part most coverage leaves out.

This report does not treat solo travel after 50 purely as a lifestyle trend. Older women age into poverty at higher rates than older men, 10.1% versus 7.6%, and 43% of women aged 75 and older live alone. What gets written up as minimalism is, for a meaningful share of this population, a response to housing costs and age discrimination in hiring. The report addresses both readings, because a market analysis that ignores the second one will design the wrong product.

Also inside: market size and growth trends, age and marital and socioeconomic distribution, RV and camping demographics, the Florida case, and a full reference list with live source links so you can check every figure yourself.

Prepared by Jolene MacFadden, founder of the Solo Sojourn Project and graduate researcher at the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications.

Free. Instant PDF download. Fully cited, APA format, suitable for citation.