If you’re a single Christian who wants to solo-travel with the possibility of meeting someone special, here are five practical ways to make your next trip meaningful, connected, and worth remembering. Plus we give our top tips for travelling as a single Christian.

TL;DR

Travelling solo as a single Christian doesn’t have to feel lonely. With the right approach, it can be one of the most spiritually rich and socially rewarding experiences of your life. Here’s what we’ll cover:

• Travel with purpose — connect your trip to something meaningful, like a retreat, conference, or pilgrimage site
• Plug into a local church or charity — showing up at a Sunday service abroad is one of the fastest ways to find community
• Choose accommodation that encourages connection — homestays and retreat centres beat hotel rooms for meeting people
• Travel safely and wisely — practical habits that give you freedom without anxiety
• Consider travelling with a group — Christian group travel like ZOI puts you in community with like-minded singles from day one

Introduction

There’s a particular kind of loneliness that shows up around the holidays. Not the dramatic kind. The quiet kind. The kind where your group chat fills up with plans that don’t quite include you, where friends are booking trips with their partners or heading home to family, and you’re left wondering what to do with your own time.

If you’re a single Christian, you probably know this feeling.

But here’s what we want to say before anything else: your singleness doesn’t prevent real adventure and connection. It’s not a problem to solve before your real life begins. And the time you have right now, including the time to travel, is yours to use with intention and joy.

Travel, when approached with openness, can be one of the most spiritually rich seasons of your life. It stretches you. It humbles you. It puts you in rooms with people you’d never otherwise meet. And yes, sometimes it leads to the kind of connection you’ve been praying for.

Whether you’re thinking about a solo adventure, a short trip somewhere new, or a structured group holiday with other Christians, here are five ways of travelling as a single Christian.

1. Travel With Purpose

Before you open a browser and start searching for flights, pause for a moment.

Why do you want to travel? That sounds like a simple question, but the answer matters more than you might think. Travel for its own sake can be wonderful, but travel with intention is something else entirely. It creates a framework for your trip that goes beyond sightseeing. It gives you a reason to be somewhere, and reasons tend to attract people.

So ask yourself: is there a way to connect this trip to something meaningful?

Some ideas to get you started:

• Join a Christian retreat or conference abroad. Events like this gather people who share your values in one place, often in a beautiful location, and the conversations that come out of them can be genuinely life-changing.
• Plan your trip around a specific event, whether that’s a worship festival, a missions trip, or even a Christian arts gathering, and then add a few extra days to explore the surrounding area.
• Volunteer with an international Christian organisation. Serving alongside others in a different country creates a kind of bond that’s hard to replicate. You’re not just tourists. You’re doing something together.
• Visit a place that has personal spiritual significance to you. Israel, Rome, the Camino de Santiago. Places like these attract believers from all over the world and carry a weight that makes conversations come naturally.

If you’re looking for somewhere to start, Abernethy runs a beautiful programme of Christian retreats at Kilmalieu, their centre on the rugged west coast of Scotland. Their retreats range from themed experiences like birdwatching and mountain pilgrimage to individually guided stays focused on prayer, discernment, and rest. It’s a genuinely stunning setting, and the kind of place where you can go deeper with God while naturally meeting others who are on a similar journey.

Traveling with purpose doesn’t mean every moment needs to be structured or serious. It just means you arrive somewhere with more than a bucket list. You arrive open, curious, and ready to connect.

The truth is, purposeful travel tends to attract purposeful people. And if you’re hoping to meet someone who takes their faith seriously, those are exactly the kind of environments worth putting yourself in.

2. Plug Into a Local Church or Charity Organisation

One of the most underrated things you can do when you travel is walk into a church that isn’t yours.

It sounds simple. Maybe even a little awkward. But showing up at a Sunday service in a city you’ve never been to before is one of the fastest ways to feel less like a tourist and more like a person who belongs somewhere.

The global Church is genuinely extraordinary in this way. Wherever you go, there are believers. There are communities gathering, worshipping, sharing meals, and doing life together. And most of them are incredibly welcoming to visitors.

How to find your people when you’re away:

• Search Google Maps for churches near your accommodation. Most churches list their service times and some even have visitor information on their website.
• Check Instagram or Facebook for local Christian groups, young adult ministries, or community events happening during your stay.
• Look for volunteer opportunities through Christian organisations like YWAM (Youth With A Mission), which operates in over 180 countries and regularly welcomes short-term volunteers.
• Ask in Christian Facebook groups or forums before you travel. The online Christian community is often surprisingly helpful when it comes to local recommendations.

You don’t need to have a plan beyond showing up. Attending a service, joining a community meal, or helping out at a local charity for even a day or two can lead to conversations that stay with you long after you’ve come home.

And sometimes, the person you meet at that Sunday service in Lisbon or Cape Town or Seoul is someone you’d never have crossed paths with any other way.

3. Choose Accommodation That Encourages Connection

Where you sleep shapes the kind of trip you have. More than most people realise.

A private hotel room is comfortable, but it’s also isolating. You check in, you check out, and you rarely learn the name of the person in the room next door. If you’re traveling solo and hoping to meet people, that set-up works against you.

The good news is there are better options.

Accommodation worth considering as a solo Christian traveller:

Option	What it offers	Best for
Homestays	Living with a local family, shared meals, cultural exchange	Depth of connection, cultural immersion
Guesthouses	Smaller, more personal than hotels, often family-run	Genuine hospitality, budget-friendly
Christian retreat centres	Community-focused, often include group activities and worship	Spiritual growth, meeting other believers
Group travel accommodation	Shared spaces with fellow travellers on organised trips	Meeting like-minded singles, built-in community

Hostels are often the first thing that comes to mind for budget solo travel, but they’re not always the right fit, especially if the culture there doesn’t align with your values. That’s not a judgement. It’s just honest.

Homestays and guesthouses tend to offer something richer: a real relationship with the people hosting you, insight into how faith and community look in a different culture, and the kind of warmth that a hotel lobby simply can’t replicate.

If you’re open to it, staying somewhere that puts you in community with others from the start means you arrive somewhere with people around you, not just walls.

4. Travel Safely and Wisely

Solo travel is genuinely one of the most empowering things you can do. There’s a confidence that comes from navigating a new city on your own, figuring things out, and proving to yourself that you’re more capable than you thought.

But it does require a level of awareness that travelling with others doesn’t.

This isn’t about fear. It’s about wisdom. And as Christians, we believe wisdom is something worth actively pursuing, not just hoping for.

Practical safety habits for travelling as a single Christian:

• Share your itinerary with someone at home before you leave. A trusted friend, family member, or church leader. Let them know where you’ll be and when to expect to hear from you.
• Meet new people in public spaces. Whether it’s someone you’ve connected with through a church group, a travel app, or a chance encounter, keep early meetings in well-lit, public places.
• Stay connected. A local SIM card or an international data plan means you’re never without a way to reach someone if something doesn’t feel right.
• Trust your instincts. This is not a small thing. If a situation feels off, it probably is. You don’t owe anyone your time or your presence if something feels unsafe.
• Research your destination. Some countries have specific safety considerations for solo travellers, particularly solo women. A quick search before you go can save you a lot of stress when you’re there.

Traveling wisely doesn’t dampen the adventure. If anything, it frees you to enjoy it more fully, because you’re not anxious. You’re prepared.

Peace of mind is a gift you give yourself before you leave. And it means you can say yes to the unexpected moments, the conversations, and the connections that make travel so worth

5. Consider Travelling With a Group

Here’s the honest truth about solo travel: it’s wonderful, and it can also be lonely.

You can do everything right. You can book the perfect accommodation, show up at the local church, plan a purposeful itinerary. And there will still be moments, usually over a meal or watching a sunset, where you wish you had someone to share it with.

That’s not a failure. That’s just being human. And it’s exactly why group travel is worth taking seriously.

Why Christian group travel is different

Travelling in a group with other believers isn’t the same as a generic package holiday. It’s not a cruise full of strangers who happen to be on the same boat. Christian group travel is designed around shared values, shared faith, and shared experience. The conversations go deeper. The connections form faster. And you’re not just making friends for the trip. You’re potentially meeting people who could become part of your life long after you’ve come home.

For single Christians aged 18 to 35, one of the best options out there right now is ZOI, a Swiss travel company that runs group travel experiences specifically for Christians who want to explore the world together. Their trips combine adventure, community, and faith in a way that feels natural rather than forced. You’re not sitting in a conference room. You’re hiking, exploring, and experiencing new places alongside people who share your worldview.

And yes, people do meet their future spouses on trips like these. Not because that’s the agenda, but because when you put a group of like-minded, faith-filled young adults in a beautiful place and give them shared experiences, real connection tends to follow.

What group travel actually looks like

• A ready-made community from day one. You don’t have to work hard to meet people. They’re already there.
• Shared values as the foundation. Everyone on the trip is a Christian. That removes a lot of the uncertainty that comes with meeting strangers.
• Structured adventure with room for spontaneity. Good group travel gives you a framework, activities, meals, transport, without taking away the freedom to have your own moments.
• A safe environment for genuine connection. For solo female travellers especially, group travel offers the independence of solo travel with the security of not being alone.

If you’ve been waiting for the right moment to take a trip, this might be it. Not because you need to find a partner. But because you deserve to experience the world, and doing it alongside other Christians makes it richer.

You can find out more about ZOI’s upcoming trips at zoi.travel.

One More Thing Before You Go

Travel is one way to meet people. But it’s not the only one.

If you’re a single Christian looking to connect with other believers, whether for friendship, community, or something more, the SALT app was built for exactly that. It’s a Christian dating app designed for people who take their faith seriously, with a free version that gives you real access to a community of over a million Christians across 40+ countries.

Think of it this way: you might meet someone incredible on a ZOI trip to the Swiss Alps. And you might also find them on SALT before you’ve even packed your bag.

Both are worth trying.

Download SALT for free and start connecting with single Christians near you, or wherever in the world you happen to be headed next.

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*This article was written in collaboration with ZOI, a Swiss travel company offering group travel experiences for Christians aged. They also provided all photos.