Exploring the Lived Meaning of Safety and Independence among Solo Female Travelers: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of Experiences in International Urban Contexts

Abstract

Solo female travel in international urban environments has emerged as a significant area of study within tourism sciences due to its complex social, cultural, and embodied dimensions. Within this broad field, research increasingly highlights the need to understand how women interpret safety, independence, and emotional experiences during solo travel. Although prior studies have examined risk perception and gendered mobility, little is known about how women construct the meaning of safety and autonomy through moment-to-moment lived experiences, leading to the central question of how these meanings emerge in urban travel contexts. Using an interpretative phenomenological approach, this study reveals how solo female travelers develop embodied awareness, negotiate social interactions, and cultivate personal independence while navigating unfamiliar environments. Through in-depth semi-structured interviews with nine participants and systematic interpretative analysis, the study identified key experiential structures, including embodied vigilance, relational negotiation, emotional transformation, and self-constructed safety practices. In contrast to earlier theory-heavy discussions, the findings foreground several clear and essential insights: women’s sense of safety emerges through continuous bodily appraisal, rapid interpretation of social cues, and personalized strategies for managing uncertainty. These findings demonstrate that women's sense of safety is not determined solely by external conditions but is dynamically shaped through bodily perception, social interpretation, and reflexive meaning-making, which also contributes to the development of personal agency. Practically, the results highlight the need for tourism stakeholders to design information systems, urban wayfinding tools, and safety communication that align with how solo female travelers actually assess and navigate risk. The study further shows that independence evolves as a transformative outcome of navigating uncertainty, interpreting risk, and engaging with diverse urban atmospheres. Overall, the revised analysis clarifies how the experiential processes identified here offer both theoretical value for gendered mobility research and actionable insights for enhancing solo female travel experiences. The findings also provide a foundation for future studies examining diverse traveler identities and cultural contexts.