Barbara Roff has visited 61 countries and started to travel alone when she was about 40 because her husband did not share the same adventurous spirit.
"My husband Graham was not born to travel. If there wasn’t a reason to travel, he wouldn’t. I was born in England and came to New Zealand when I was 6 weeks old.
"I always wanted to go back to England but, as I said, my husband wasn’t a traveller, so it took a long time for me to get back over there — but then from there, it went on to the rest of the world."
She is part of a burgeoning group of people heading overseas on their own, many of them women.
House of Travel statistics show 41% of holiday bookings in 2024 were made by solo travellers. The data also shows women over 50 are leading the solo-travel pack, making up 71% of 2024 solo bookings.
It had been booming over the past couple of years, last year’s increase nearly double the rise seen in 2022 by solo travellers.
Strong growth was expected to continue.
Mrs Roff said she believed she inherited the travel spirit from her parents.
Her father was a Kiwi who was in the RAF and met her mother when he was in England during World War 2 and after they fell in love, her mother left England to settle in New Zealand.
"He went to the other side of the world and then she went to the other side of the world to be with him ... So I think I got this passion for travels from then."
In recent years, due to her age, she had been choosing to travel in groups, either on a cruise or as part of a tour group, but most of her travelling had been done alone, she said.
The only down side to that was she did not have many photos of herself during trips — but she always bought a shirt as a memento.
Mrs Roff said she was always careful when overseas and she had never had any troubles or regrets during her solo trips.
She was planning her next trip — a cruise to Iceland and Greenland — which she would take in a few months’ time.
"My advice to women thinking about solo travel is to put yourself out there. Meet people, talk to them and they will talk back.
"Honestly, I feel very, very fortunate because I’ve made the effort — I knew I could do it and so I did it ..."
