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The number of “soli-days” is rising, with more people choosing to holiday alone, say travel agents.
Leading the trend are professional Londoners aged 40 to 60 who have either separated or divorced.
Online travel firm ebookers.com said as many as 15 per cent of its customers took trips on their own in the past 12 months.
Solo's Holidays, which specialises in travel for single people, said the sector had grown greatly in the UK in the last few years and now rivalled that for families and couples.
Lynn Redshaw, the company's product manager, said: “It is a rising trend. If you look at the divorce statistics going up, there are more single people around.
“We cater for groups of singles. But it is not an 18 to 30 holiday. Our minimum age is 25 and most of our customers are in their forties. People may feel awkward initially, but they get over that quickly.”
Apart from changing social habits, travellers also said they were deciding to go alone because friends and family could not afford it because of the recession.
The ebookers.com poll of 4,000 adults found men twice as likely as women to travel alone. Top destinations included Australia, South America, China and Africa.
