How to meet people when traveling: 7 ways that actually work
Published: 2026-07-06
The best travel memories are rarely about landmarks. They're about people: a random conversation in a hostel kitchen, dinner with someone you met at the airport, a friendship that outlasted the trip by years. The catch is that meeting people on the road doesn't just happen by itself - especially when you travel alone and have a week ahead of you in a city where you know nobody. The good news is that it comes down to a few decisions made in advance, not to your personality. Here are seven approaches that actually work.
1. Start before you even take off
The best time to meet fellow travellers is before the trip, not during it. When you know in advance who is on your flight or heading to the same place in the same week, you can arrange a shared taxi from the airport, a coffee before the gate or your first evening in a new city - instead of hoping chance will do it for you. That is exactly what MeetInPlane is built for: add your trip and the system shows you other travellers on the same route and dates, along with the reason you match. Just as importantly, all of it is settled while you are still at home and have time to reply properly, rather than in a rush between check-in and boarding.
2. Pick accommodation with shared spaces
A hostel with a big kitchen, or a hotel with a lobby where things actually happen, beats most apps. Cooking together is the easiest conversation starter ever invented: at any hob somebody is waiting for a free burner, and asking for the salt takes no courage at all. A long table in the dining room works the same way, as does an evening event in the bar downstairs or a noticeboard full of "looking for company tomorrow" notes. When you book, look past the star rating and check whether the description and the photos show any space at all where strangers sit together.
3. Join free walking tours
You will find one in almost every major city, usually twice a day and with no booking required. It is two or three hours in a group of people who have just arrived, know nobody here, and are in the mood to talk - it is hard to imagine better starting conditions. The format helps too: you walk side by side, the guide stops every few minutes, and "where are you from?" lands more naturally there than anywhere else. The important part, though, comes at the end, when the group breaks up: that is the moment somebody suggests lunch together, and all you have to do is be the one who says it.
4. Eat at shared tables
Counter seating, breakfast markets, food halls with long benches - choose places where you sit next to somebody rather than across from an empty chair. A lone table for two signals "do not disturb" to the staff and to the rest of the room, whereas a seat at the counter automatically puts you within conversational range of a neighbour and of the bartender. You also get a view of the kitchen, and the food itself is a topic that needs no introduction. If you travel alone, this is the smallest change of habit with the largest effect on how many conversations your day contains.
5. Book a class, not an attraction
A cooking class, a surf lesson or two hours at a potter's wheel gives you something sightseeing cannot: a shared experience and a ready-made topic. Sightseeing is done side by side in silence, whereas in a class everybody is equally incompetent, laughs at their own mistakes and helps each other out - the shortest route there is from strangers to a group. That group goes for a beer afterwards far more often than you would think, because it already shares a story from the same afternoon. So if your day has room for one "experience", pick the kind where you do something rather than the kind where you look at something.
6. Don't hide in your headphones
It's a cliché, but it works: open posture, a book instead of a phone, asking someone for a lunch recommendation. People approach those who look present rather than sealed off in their own world - and headphones plus eyes locked on a screen read as "not now" from across the room. The point is not to talk to everyone around you, but to be reachable for the ones who would happily start themselves. It is enough to take the headphones off wherever you are waiting anyway: in a queue, over breakfast, at a bus stop, at the gate.
7. Say "yes" more often than usual
An invitation to explore together, a board-game night at the hostel, a sunrise beach trip - the people who lose the most while travelling are the ones who decline on autopilot, because they are tired or had a different plan. Simple rule: if you don't have a hard reason to say no, go. The cost is low, since we are usually talking about a few hours, and it is exactly those accidental yeses that stay in your memory instead of the third museum of the day. Your instinct counts as a hard reason too, of course - if a situation or a person gives you doubts, "no" is a complete answer and needs no justification.
All of these have one thing in common: none of them requires being the life of the party, only putting yourself where a conversation is the natural thing to happen. Most of those places are found before take-off, incidentally - I mapped them out in "Matched. Now what? The six phases of an airport", where the terminal breaks down into six phases with very different odds of a conversation. And if you want to start before boarding - create a free MeetInPlane account and meet the people on your next flight.