marieclaire.com.au (^) | 49
The number of female
solo travellers has
skyrocketed, but amid
Instagram-worthy
escapades are tales of
violence and death,
raising questions about
how the world is greeting
women who travel alone.
By Megan Specia and
Ta r i r o M z e z e w a
C
arla Stefaniak did
everything “right”,
her best friend said.
On a five-day holiday
to Costa Rica
in November
to celebrate her 36th
birthday, the young woman chose a
gated Airbnb villa near the airport. It
had a security guard. It was in a safe
neighbourhood. And she made sure to
get home before dark. The night before
she was to fly home to Florida, she
contacted her best friend, Laura
Jaime, on FaceTime. She showed her
the earrings she bought in a market
and gave a video tour of her villa.
The friends planned to see each
other the next day, when Jaime was
to pick her up from the airport. But
Stefaniak never boarded her flight.
During their phone call, Stefaniak
had made a strange remark. She said
the situation felt “sketchy”, but didn’t
elaborate. “Carla knew at 8:20 that
night that something was wrong,”
Jaime said. “Sometimes we justify
our intuition. But when something is
triggered and something feels wrong,
you have to listen to it.”
A week later, Stefaniak’s
brutalised body was found wrapped in
plastic and half-buried in a forest near
her Airbnb rental. The Costa Rican
police arrested the property’s security
guard in connection with the killing.
Today, women’s increased
spending power has given them the
means to travel more for leisure and
adventure. Shifting attitudes in the
West about who can travel alone have
also added to a growing industry.
Social media plays a big part, offering
intimate glimpses of far-off
lands. A scroll through Instagram
hashtags such as #LadiesGoneGlobal,
#WeAreTravelGirls and #TheTravel
Women offer millions of photos
of women posing on beaches,
trekking up mountains and
exploring cobblestone streets –
a collective and aspirational lure.
It’s not surprising then, that
solo travel by women has grown in
popularity. Hostelworld, an online
hostel-booking platform, found in
a 2018 study that bookings by solo
female travellers increased by 45 per
cent from 2015 to 2017, compared with
a 40 per cent increase for men. “Solo
travel was once seen as brave and risky
for female travellers, but a shift of
attitude has meant that it’s now seen
as an adventurous, exciting experience
allowing them to feel free with no-one
else to worry about,” the company said.
A 2018 global survey by British
Airways of 9000 women found that
more than 50 per cent had taken a
solo holiday, with 75 per cent planning
solo trips in the next few years.
Another ad hoc sign of women’s
growing interest in hitting the
road alone: internet searches for
“solo female travel” have also risen
drastically in the past five years,
according to Google Trends.
But even as more women explore
the world, there is no clear global
picture of the scale of violence against
female solo travellers, making it hard
to pin down whether attacks are on
the rise or people have wider access
to the grim news. The reason: most
countries do not comprehensively track
violence against female travellers.
FROM LEFT
Grace Millane
and Carla
Stefaniak,
who were both
murdered while
travelling solo.
sharon
(sharon)
#1