TRACING THE FOOTSTEPS' :WOMEN SOLO TRAVELERS IN SINGAPORE

Abstract

With the advancement in air transport and increasing disposable income, Asian women are traveling more and choosing to embark on diverse forms of leisure. Among them includes the solo woman traveller. While women's travel experiences have been documented in tourism and leisure studies, the experiences of the solo Asian woman traveller is relatively under-theorised. As such, this research focuses on Asian solo women travellers in the Singapore context. Drawing on in-depth interviews, there are two parts to this research; 1) the motivations of solo travel and the role one's gender and cultural background has in influencing one's perception of solo travel and; 2) the actual experience of solo travel, in particular, focusing on the concepts of the gaze and geographies of fear. Focusing on the level of the individual, the research looks at how empowerment is derived from solo travel, which serves not only as a motivation, but also derived from their strategies of negotiation of landscapes of fear and the surveillance and sexualized gaze in tourism space. Findings show that one's initial motivation of solo travel are influenced and constrained by cultural factors and perceptions of fear, one's ethnicity does produce different experiences and that women are active participants in negotiating and creating their own travel experiences.