THE SOLO TRAVELLER
Your world. Your way.
Confidence and Safety
Caroline Godfrey, Holiday Director with Just You. Image courtesy Caroline Godfrey.
Someone to count on
By Tiffany West
Briefly …
An emergency early in Caroline Godfrey’s career brought home the particular responsibilities of accompanying people who travel independently – each with their own circumstances, expectations and reasons for making the journey.
Caroline Godfrey, now a Holiday Director for specialist solo tour operator Just You, encountered an incident about a year into her career that would change the way she thought about looking after solo travellers. One of the guests on her tour had diabetes and had explained aspects of her condition to Caroline. On the second evening, another member of the group became concerned when the woman failed to appear for dinner.
Caroline tried calling her, but there was no answer. She went to the woman’s hotel room, knocked on the door and heard water running inside. With assistance from hotel staff, she gained access to the room. The woman had collapsed in the shower and fallen into a diabetic coma. She subsequently made a full recovery.
For Caroline, the experience brought into focus a particular vulnerability of travelling alone, even when travelling as part of an organised group. “It made me think about solo travellers and how they have no one travelling with them who knows their medical history if there is an emergency,” she recalls.
With 11 years of experience accompanying travellers on escorted journeys, Caroline is familiar with the responsibilities of group touring: preparing itineraries, researching destinations, managing arrangements and responding when plans change. But experience has taught her that understanding the people travelling with her is equally important. “You quickly realise that everyone arrives with a different story. One person might have dreamed of visiting somewhere for decades, while another may simply have seen a photograph and thought, ‘I’d like to go there’.”
“You quickly realise that everyone arrives with a different story.”
Those differences extend beyond the reasons people choose a destination. Travellers arrive with their own personalities, expectations and circumstances, and Caroline believes recognising those individual needs is fundamental to her role. “Some people want to spend lots of time together; others prefer their own space. I try to create opportunities for people to share experiences, while making sure they know they don’t have to do everything together. It is their holiday, after all.”
“Some people want to spend lots of time together; others prefer their own space.”
Joining an escorted tour doesn’t necessarily mean wanting constant company. For travellers accustomed to making their own decisions, the opportunity to participate in shared experiences while retaining personal space is an important consideration. Caroline acknowledges that getting to know individual travellers becomes more difficult with larger groups. She also recognises that circumstances outside the holiday can influence how someone responds to the experience. “People have different motivations and reasons for travelling. They may have distractions and issues at home which impact them. It is important to recognise this.”
Her approach has also been shaped by travelling as a guest herself. Having participated in escorted tours, she has experienced occasions when the service provided by a tour manager fell short of her expectations. Rather than dismissing those experiences, she has used them to reconsider her own work. “I learn from those occasions and see how I can improve what I provide for my customers,” she says.
When travelling for pleasure, Caroline’s priorities are more personal. Nature, animals, photography and opportunities to learn are among the things she looks for when choosing a journey. “It is nice to be able to put myself first and look after myself, doing things that I am interested in.” Her enthusiasm for photography also finds its way into her professional life. She creates daily photographic collages for her groups, giving guests a record of their shared experiences.
For first-time escorted travellers, Caroline understands that joining a group of strangers can be daunting. Her advice is to concentrate on the destination that prompted the booking in the first place. Whatever their individual circumstances, the travellers have already made at least one decision in common. She has also witnessed how relationships develop during a journey, sometimes through changes to plans. While her responsibility is to find solutions and keep the tour moving, those unexpected disruptions can often become memorable group experiences.
After more than a decade in the role, Caroline continues to find particular satisfaction in seeing travellers experience places they have waited years to visit. “I’ve had guests tell me they’ve waited decades to experience something they’ve always dreamed about. Seeing their emotion when that moment finally arrives is incredibly rewarding.”
But perhaps the most meaningful feedback she receives concerns something less tangible than the destinations or experiences themselves. “One of the nicest things guests have said to me is that I make them feel safe.” For Caroline, that sense of security is inseparable from the independence her guests have chosen to exercise. And as she discovered early in her career, looking after solo travellers sometimes means recognising when someone needs help before they can ask for it.
To learn more about Just You, visit their website.
31 October 2026 at 10:19:19 am