How to Meet People When You Travel Solo (Even If You Stay in a Hotel)

You don't need a dorm bed to find company. You need the right tour, the right table and one or two apps.

The short answer

Book something with a group built in. A small-group day tour, a walking tour, a cooking class or a food tour gives you instant company with no effort. For the evenings, sit at the bar, not at a table. For locals, go to a language exchange. Staying in a hotel doesn’t shut you out: some hostels open their bars and pub crawls to anyone, and a few social hotels run public events.

How to meet people when you travel solo is the question almost every solo traveller asks. Hostelworld’s 2025 survey of 3,334 solo travellers found that 71% actively look for company on the road, and only 3.7% of those met no one. The catch for our readers is that most advice assumes you’re sleeping in a dorm.

This guide is built from 25 travel guides and blogs, the official pages of 10 apps and 7 hostel and hotel brands, and two surveys from 2025 and 2026. It ranks every method by effort, and shows what still works if you stay somewhere comfortable.

Every method, ranked by effort

Method	Effort	Works from a hotel?	Best for
Small-group day tour or trip	Lowest	Yes	Instant company for a whole day
Walking tour	Low	Yes	Your first morning in a city
Cooking class or food tour	Low	Yes	A small group round one table
Pub crawl	Low	Often; check it’s open to non-guests	A big night out
A social hostel, private room	Low	–	The most people, with your own room
Dinner with strangers (Timeleft, EatWith, supper clubs)	Low to medium	Yes	Conversation over a proper meal
Sitting at the bar or counter	Medium	Yes	Evenings alone that don’t stay alone
Language exchange	Medium	Yes	Meeting locals
Meetup events and classes	Medium	Yes	Shared interests: hiking, dance, yoga
Friend apps (BFF, Couchsurfing)	Medium, less predictable	Yes	Locals and longer stays
Volunteering or a multi-week group trip	Highest	–	The deepest friendships

The easiest ways: book a group

Small-group day tours and trips are the method the sources agree on most after hostels. The group, the plan and the conversation are all built in, and multi-day trips turn strangers into travel friends. If you’re nervous about your first day, book one.

Walking tours are the classic first-morning move: a ready-made group, a guide who breaks the ice, and tours that often end at a bar or a lunch spot. Two things have changed. Free Tours by Foot says most of its tours are now ticketed, with pay-what-you-wish left in only a few cities. GuruWalk still lists tip-based tours, and says walkers usually give €10–20.

Cooking classes and food tours work for the same reason: a small group, a shared task and a meal together at the end. Wine tastings do the same, several glasses in.

Pub crawls are the one place where everyone has come to meet people. Most are run by hostels, but not all are guests-only (see below). In Lisbon, the public pub crawl leaves Praça Luís de Camões every night; in Istanbul, the Istanbul Pub Crawl runs Wednesday to Saturday. In Prague, a city rule means organised crawls must end by 10pm.

This is the part most guides skip. You have three options.

1. Book a private room in a social hostel. Six of our sources call this the middle ground: you get the common areas, the rooftop and the events, and a door that locks. Hostelworld admits dorms are better for meeting people, but the events are open to everyone staying there. Our social picks all have private rooms: Yes! Lisbon, Sophie’s in Prague, Cheers in Istanbul and Wombat’s in London, where every room has its own bathroom.

2. Go to the hostels that let outsiders in. Policies vary, so check before you go. Some operators say so on their own pages:

Generator welcomes people staying elsewhere in its bars, restaurants and social areas, with “small exceptions”.
T5 Social in Bucharest runs its evening events for guests, travellers and locals alike.
The CATS pub crawl in Madrid is open to guests of other hostels and to locals.

Others are guests-only. Nomad City Hostel in Stockholm keeps its bar for its own guests. In Lisbon, Home Lisbon Hostel doesn’t allow outside visitors. And Hostelworld’s Linkups, the events you join through its app, need a booked bed.

3. Use Hostelworld’s Social Pass. This is new: a pass that unlocks the Hostelworld app’s city chats, traveller profiles and curated events, such as pub crawls, without a hostel booking. It’s a one-off purchase from €4.99 for a week to €59.99 for a year, and doesn’t renew automatically. Hostelworld doesn’t say whether pass holders can walk into a hostel they aren’t staying at, so treat it as a way to find people, not a key to every bar.

Or pick a social hotel. A few hotel brands build the hostel idea into a comfortable room. Zoku says its restaurant and bar are open to the public every day, with community dinners and music nights. In our city guides, Mama Shelter’s Lisbon rooftop takes walk-ins, and its Prague DJ nights are open to the public from Thursday to Saturday. If you book a regular hotel, the sources suggest avoiding honeymoon and family resorts, and using the hotel bar.

Evenings: the bar, the counter and the shared table

Sit at the bar, not at a table. Six of our sources say the same thing: the bartender starts the conversation, and the diners next to you join in. It works in fine dining too. Counter seats and communal tables do the same job; our London guide lists Soho restaurants with counter seating.

Book a dinner with strangers. Timeleft matches you with five others for dinner, drinks or a run; it now runs in more than 200 cities in 52 countries, and you pay for your own food. EatWith and local supper clubs put you at a host’s table with other guests. Several sources say the hosts and the format do the icebreaking for you.

Meeting locals, not just other travellers

Nomadic Matt makes a point worth repeating: chance encounters with locals are rare, because locals need repeat contact before they invite you in. What works is joining something they already go to.

Language exchanges are the best route to locals, and English speakers are usually welcome in non-English-speaking cities. Mundo Lingo runs free weekly meetups. In Riyadh, a language exchange meets on Olaya Street every Friday; in Istanbul, one meets in Kadıköy on Wednesdays.
Meetup is where locals turn up for hiking, dance, language and food groups. Fourteen of our sources recommend it.
Classes (dance, yoga, surf, art) give you a shared interest to talk about.

The apps: what’s changed in 2026

App	What it does	Cost	What’s changed
Hostelworld	Hostel and city chats, traveller profiles, events	Free with a booking; Social Pass from €4.99 without one	The Social Pass means you no longer need a hostel booking
Timeleft	Matched dinners, drinks and runs with strangers	Membership, plus your own bill	Now in 200+ cities in 52 countries
BFF (formerly Bumble For Friends)	Friend matching, groups and events	Free	Relaunched as a standalone app with Groups
Couchsurfing	Hosting, Hangouts and events	Paid since 2020; in-app prices from $1.99 a month	Rebuilt in May 2026; the Hangouts map now shows only an approximate area
Meetup	Interest-group events	Varies by group	Still one of the most recommended
GuruWalk	Tip-based walking tours	Tips; usually €10–20	Still tip-based
Mundo Lingo	Language and social meetups	Free	Still running weekly

Most effort, deepest friendships

Volunteering, work exchanges and multi-week group trips take the most planning, but the sources describe the friendships as the closest and longest-lasting. They suit long trips more than a week away.

What the data says

Most solo travellers want company. In Hostelworld’s 2025 survey, 58% want to meet new people and 52% stay in touch with people they met. 28% worry about feeling lonely.
It usually works. Of the 71% looking for connection, only 3.7% met no one.
A caveat: Hostelworld’s respondents skew young; 66% were 18–30.
It’s not just the young. A 2026 survey of 2,000 US adults by Talker Research for Road Scholar found 60% are interested in meeting new people when they travel, and 53% are open to joining up with other travellers.

The easiest way in, city by city

City	The easiest way to meet people
Lisbon	The nightly public pub crawl, or Mama Shelter’s rooftop
Prague	The Letná and Riegrovy sady beer gardens on a warm evening
Belgrade	A walking tour, then the Cetinjska 15 bar courtyard
London	A walking tour, or a counter seat in Soho
Istanbul	The morning walking tour of the old city, or a food walk to Kadıköy
Riyadh	The Friday language exchange, or a run club

Meeting strangers safely

Trust your gut, and leave if something feels off
Tell someone your plans, or share your live location
Meet in a public place the first time
Don’t say where you’re staying, or that you’re alone, until you know someone
Check people before you meet: chat first, and look at their profile
Watch your drink, and don’t get drunk with people you’ve just met

The verdict

You don’t have to choose between a comfortable room and company. Book one group activity for the first day, sit at the bar in the evenings, and use a language exchange or Meetup for locals. If you want the hostel social life, book a private room in a social hostel, or pick one of the hostels and social hotels that open their doors to everyone. Our city guides list the best options in each city.

Sources

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