Elizabeth Breuer Stacey of Marshfield knew she would be alone in Scotland for a couple of days later this summer while her husband attended a conference in Edinburgh. Rather than explore the city alone, she did what more and more solo travelers are doing: She went online to find someone to show her around.
Breuer Stacey, 55, posted ads on the Craig's List (craigslist.com) London site, on VirtualTourist.com, and on TravelChums.com, offering to pay for transportation, food, and drink for anyone who would pal around with her in Edinburgh. Through VirtualTourist, an Edinburgh resident took her up on the offer.
"I'm happy to find my way around by myself, but I always enjoy having someone to go around with," Breuer Stacey says. "It's more fun than being alone, and you learn more about a place when you're with someone who knows it."
Using the Internet to purchase plane tickets and book hotel rooms has become increasingly popular, so going online to find travel mates, whether for an entire trip or for a meal or sightseeing, is perhaps a natural next step.
"Five or six years ago, using the Web to make travel arrangements was in its infancy," says Rod Caborn of Yesawich, Pepperdine, Brown & Russell, a public relations company that conducts annual surveys of Internet use in making trip arrangements. "Now, it's become a part of our culture."
Among the largest sites for finding fellow travelers are VirtualTourist.com, with more than 465,000 members from more than 220 countries and territories, and ThornTree.com, Lonely Planet's travel forum, which has more than 186,000 registered users. Other sites target travelers of a particular stripe, including young backpackers (Eurotrip.com), seniors (SeniorsMatch.com), and single women (HERmail.net). Most have forums that let members post their travel dates and find trip companions, or solicit advice, such as how to dress for a hike in Nepal, rent a car in Ghana, or see soccer in Buenos Aires.
"Traditionally, planning a trip involved having a friend go with you and doing massive amounts of research, or contacting people on the spot," says Giampiero Ambrosi, vice president of site content at VirtualTourist. "Finding people online and being able to ask questions or plan to meet up makes it easier and less daunting.
On VirtualTourist, users create personal pages, where they can post photos and describe themselves and past trips. On TravelChums, which boasts 26,000 members, users create detailed profiles, with items such as "my trip price range," "the type of travel I prefer," and "about the person I'd like to travel with." As with sites like Friendster or Match.com, members can scour the site for compatible members, and have matches sent to them via e-mail.
"Let's face it, if you're going to be traveling with someone for some time, you might want to know what their likes and dislikes are, and what they look like," says TravelChums founder Dorlene Kaplan. TravelChums users, like VirtualTourist's, are fairly evenly distributed in age from 20s to 60s.
TravelChums user Julian Peterson of Cambridge met a woman living in Edmonton, Alberta, last year. She came to Cambridge, and from there they visited Martha's Vineyard and Edgartown.
"It was pretty successful," Peterson, 62, says of the experience. The two have stayed in touch.
"I'm a little gun-shy about the way people advertise themselves through dating services," Peterson says. "I figure if there's a common interest in travel, that makes it easier."
For some who use traveler-oriented websites, connections they have made have flourished. Since becoming a member of VirtualTourist in 1999, Barry Haynes of Oceanside, Calif., has visited fellow site members in Dallas and Washington, D.C. On a road trip to Calgary, Alberta, a few years ago, he had lunch with a member in Las Vegas, and then met another in Salt Lake City. On Memorial Day 2001, a member from Switzerland visited him in Oceanside.
"It's an online family," says Haynes, 41. "
For all the success stories, however, meeting up in the real world with people found on the Internet warrants caution. Sharon Wingler, author of "Travel Alone and Love It: A Flight Attendant's Guide to Solo Travel" (Chicago Spectrum)and a frequent speaker on solo travel, says the key is to be both cautious and open-minded.
"On the one hand, travelers are a wonderful group of people, so I would say it's good to err on the side of trust," Wingler says. "On the other hand, these days you could be talking life or death."
Wingler says the best advice is to use common sense when arranging a meeting through the Internet. She advises against giving specific hotel information, and advocates meeting in a public place.
"After that first meeting, just use your instincts," she says.
For many who have found new travel companions online, the world has become a smaller, friendlier place.
"There seems to be this amazing camaraderie that exists between travelers," says VirtualTourist member Jenn Davenport of Long Beach, Calif. VirtualTourist "created an arena for that camaraderie to exist between people whose paths may have not otherwise crossed."
Ami Albernaz is a freelance writer in Boston.
