Tour operators share what they’ve learned about designing flexible and memorable trips for women travelers
Women’s travel groups are nothing new, but the way tour operators approach them is evolving. The days of assuming that an all-female group automatically wants shopping, spas, and wine tastings are giving way to something much more thoughtful: trips built around the personalities and interests of the women taking them.
That may sound obvious, but according to tour operators, it requires plenty of listening behind the scenes. Safety and logistics remain important, but so do pacing, flexibility, and group dynamics. For operators, the biggest lesson may be the simplest one: Don’t assume you know what women want.
To get a sense of how tour operators prepare for these women’s group tours, Leisure GroupTravel queried the global Tourpreneur community on Facebook. Tourpreneuris is the largest global community of tour and activity operators.
Get group travel news, destination ideas and industry insights delivered to your inbox every Friday morning with InSite from Leisure Group Travel.
Start by listening
Cherrye Moore, founder of My Bella Vita Travel and a DMC/incoming operator in Italy since 2007, says the process starts with an honest conversation about what safety means to each group.
“As a female founder, ensuring women feel safe is a priority,” Moore said. “Since our women-only groups are fully customized and private, we have an honest conversation about what that means to each group. We offer video calls to answer questions and have someone who is on-call for them throughout their trip.”
Safety also influences the logistics. Moore typically includes transfers rather than having travelers walk through unfamiliar areas on their own, particularly when they may be tired or carrying luggage. She also books well-located hotels and uses experienced tour leaders, with female drivers available.
But Moore is equally careful about another kind of assumption.
“We are also very mindful not to assume to know what women want. Some women hate shopping, some want to attend soccer games, some love wine, others hate boating. That’swhy we ask them.”
That philosophy can also make room for different interests within the same group. Moore recalls a group of six friends, all over 65, in which half wanted a spa day while the others wanted to play golf. Rather than force everyone into the same activity, the group split up for the morning and reunited on the beach for seafood lunch and white wine.
“They were thrilled,” Moore said.
Stay ahead of group travel trends—subscribe to InSite from Leisure Group Travel.
Give travelers room to breathe
Lisa Wirth is the founder and chief experience officer of ATAXITO, a boutique travel company that offers small group tours in Oaxaca, Mexico.
“For me, designing for an all-women group begins with creating the conditions in which women can stop managing everything,” Wirth said. “So much of our everyday lives as women involves a hyper-awareness of others before ourselves. On an ATAXITO journey, we want them to feel that someone is doing that for them.
“Of course, that means getting the fundamentals right, but it also means thinking about the less obvious things, like whether someone will feel comfortable enough to opt out of a portion of the itinerary without feeling as though she’s letting the group down.”
Guests spend time with local women in kitchens, homes, markets, studios and family businesses. Rather than staging an experience for visitors, ATAXITO seeks opportunities for travelers to see culture as it is actually lived, through food, conversation, relationships and knowledge passed between generations.
Put women at the center of the experience
There is also an economic component to the experience. Wirth says more than 85% of ATAXITO’s selected trip partners, including activities, artisans, and vendors, are local and women-owned. The company calls this “economic reciprocity,” with the goal of making sure the financial impact of travel supports the same values of connection and empowerment that shape the trips.
Peter Grubb, founder and president of ROW Adventures Family of Companies, sees a similar opportunity to connect travelers with local women entrepreneurs, business owners, and guides. His company has operated women-only trips for decades and also works as a subcontractor for women-only travel companies.
For Grubb, one of the most important considerations is having women lead and guide the trips. ROW has spent decades cultivating a strong team of female guides in traditionallymale-dominated activities.
“We take pride in the fact that we have worked hard over decades to train and cultivate a strong women guide team in activities dominated by men such as whitewater rafting and sea kayaking,” Grubb said. “Being able to provide strong, capable, caring, and talented women guides has allowed us to operate superb tours for women-only groups. In terms of logistics, accommodations, pacing, or trip difficulty, we listen to the company’s wishes when designing a tour. For our own tours as well, we would add more opportunities to connect with local women entrepreneurs or business owners, using women-owned and/or operated restaurants and hotels, or experiences like a cooking workshop or jewelry-making workshop, etc.”
Safety, of course, remains paramount for every group. But Grubb says operators working with women-only groups should pay particular attention to hotel locations when traveling in cities and carefully review nighttime activities and destinations.
Get more group travel ideas and industry insights with InSite from Leisure Group Travel.
Pay attention to the details
Maria Gorshin, a Philadelphia tour operator, has seen a significant increase in bookings from women traveling together. Her approach begins long before the tour itself, with a detailed consultation with the group leader.
“I’ve learned that the foundation of an exceptional tour experience is a thoughtful conversation/consultation with the group leader before the tour day. Lots of good questions and, even more importantly, deep listening,” Gorshin said. “During that conversation, I discover the group dynamics, expectations, what they love and enjoy most when they travel anywhere in the world, what tone for our time together they would appreciate most, the mobility of the group and more.”
Gorshin says women’s groups particularly appreciate feeling looked after, that the details have been considered and that their individual interests and personalities matter. She also emphasizes the importance of taking care of the individual, not just the group as a whole.
That attention can create memorable surprises.
“One fun example from this summer: A group of 10 ladies from one of the oldest botanical societies in the U.S. booked a walking tour of Philly neighborhoods with me. They really didn’t request anything other than a nice stroll through the city. Knowing their affiliation, I made sure to design the route to include the surprise of many beautiful and unique private gardens along the way. They loved seeing how green and floral Philly is! We stopped so often because everyone wanted time for photos of rooftops, side streets, and also themselves in front of elaborate flowers in window boxes, etc.”
Create connections, not just activities
Cynthia Coutu, manager at Delectabulles, discovered another way to create a distinctive women-only experience: champagne.
After a conversation with a female winemaker about the dynamics of wine tastings, Coutu began hosting women-only champagne workshops in Paris about a decade ago. She uses champagnes made by women and incorporates female producers into excursions to the Champagne region.
“After 10 years of doing this, women are just as interested in the technical information. It is to empower themselves,” Coutu said. “They want to understand what style of champagne they prefer and why, what style pairs better with which type of food, and how to get the best bang for their buck. And they want to support female producers. Ditto for my excursions to the Champagne region. They want to visit female-run champagne houses and learn about the role of women in the history of champagne.”
Susan Brink, managing partner at Genuine Morocco, has found women-only groups often bring their own unique dynamics. Her luxury private tours in Morocco typically include four to seven women, many of whom already know each other. But knowing someone socially doesn’t necessarily mean knowing how they travel. One traveler may prefer a quiet dinner at the riad while another wants to go out and experience the town at night.
“We need to take into account how much they know about each other and what that means as far as what they want to do and how they want to do it,” Brink says.
Those differences can extend to the practical details, too. Room assignments can become a surprisingly important part of the planning process: Does a traveler share a double room with someone she doesn’t know particularly well, or does the group accommodate the longtime friend who wants a single room? And what happens when someone would rather skip the scheduled cooking class?
For Brink, understanding those preferences ahead of time helps operators navigate both the group experience and the pricing. It’s another reminder that successful women’s group travel isn’t about building a one-size-fits-all itinerary. It’s about understanding the people taking the trip and giving them enough flexibility to make the experience their own.
More group travel ideas. More industry insights. Delivered weekly. Subscribe to InSite from Leisure Group Travel.
