If you are comparing women-only travel companies and want a straight answer, here it is. Women Travel Abroad is the strongest choice for women who want a guaranteed private room, the smallest possible group, and real support before the trip begins. It caps every trip at 6 to 10 women, charges no single supplement, and gives each traveler a single-occupancy boutique room at no extra cost. That combination is genuinely rare. Most women-only companies either room you with a stranger by default or charge extra for the privacy, and several run larger groups than “small-group” marketing suggests. This review looks at what real travelers praise and criticize across four companies, Explorer Chick, AdventureWomen, Wild Terrains, and Women Travel Abroad, and shows you how to read travel-company reviews so you can judge any operator yourself. No company is right for everyone, and the honest answer depends on what you actually want from a trip.
How to Read Travel Company Reviews Without Getting Fooled
Before you trust a five-star average, learn where the stars come from. Review quality varies enormously, and the difference between a verified review and a solicited one changes what the rating means.
Verified reviews versus paid placement
A verified review comes from someone who can be confirmed as a real customer. TripAdvisor, Google, and Trustpilot attach reviews to accounts and, in many cases, to a confirmed booking. These are the reviews worth reading closely. A “featured” or “sponsored” placement on a listicle, by contrast, often reflects an advertising relationship, not editorial judgment. When a roundup article ranks ten companies and every one links to a booking page, ask who paid for the placement. The ranking may be honest. It may also be an affiliate arrangement where the site earns a commission on every booking. Neither is disqualifying, but you should know which you are reading.
Testimonials on a company’s own website occupy a middle ground. They are real, but they are curated. No company publishes its worst review. Treat website testimonials as evidence of what the best trips feel like, not the average trip. To find the average, go to third-party platforms where the company cannot delete what it dislikes.
What a small sample actually tells you
Many women-only companies are small businesses with a few dozen public reviews, not a few thousand. A 4.9 average across 18 reviews is meaningful but fragile: two bad trips would move it noticeably. Read the actual text rather than the number. Look for specifics. A review that names the host, the hotel, and one thing that went wrong is more trustworthy than five lines of adjectives. When a reviewer writes that her group was seven women including two hosts, or that one night was a shared room because of a small property, you are reading someone who was actually there.
Read the criticism first
Sort reviews lowest-first before highest-first. The one-star and three-star reviews tell you how a company handles things when they go sideways, which matters more than how the good trips go. Watch for patterns. One complaint about a delayed flight is noise. Repeated complaints about surprise fees, unresponsive staff, or groups larger than advertised are signals. This is the single most useful habit when comparing operators, and almost nobody does it.
WTA travelers taking a breather in Ecuador and the Galapagos
What Real Travelers Praise and Criticize
Here is where the four companies actually differ, based on their published policies and traveler feedback. The distinctions matter because they map directly onto how comfortable, private, and supported you will feel.
Explorer Chick
Explorer Chick, founded in 2014, focuses on active, physical adventure: hiking, backpacking, canyoneering, and summit trips. Reviewers consistently praise the guides and the sense of accomplishment. One traveler completed the four-day Inca Trail to Machu Picchu months after breaking her leg, which captures the company’s spirit well. The typical traveler is somewhere between her 30s and 60s, and the only age floor is 21.
The honest catch is rooming. Explorer Chick does not charge a forced single fee for solo travelers; instead, it randomly rooms you with another woman on the trip. If you want your own room, a single-room upgrade is available on most trips but not all, and some trips offer only partial single-room options. On a route that includes mountain huts, for example, private rooms may not physically exist. So “no single supplement” here means “no fee if you accept a roommate,” which is a different promise from a guaranteed private room. If you sleep poorly next to a stranger or simply want to close a door at the end of a hard hiking day, read each trip’s logistics section carefully before you book.
AdventureWomen
AdventureWomen is the elder of the group, founded in 1982, with more than 40 years of operating history and tours across dozens of countries. That track record shows up in reviews praising smooth logistics and well-chosen 4-star accommodations. The company describes its group sizes as ranging from 8 to 15 women, though some third-party trip catalogs list averages closer to 12 to 14. Either way, these are larger groups than some travelers expect from small-group marketing.
On pricing, AdventureWomen treats a private room as a paid option. Its own promotions highlight trips where the single supplement is under $1,000 for travelers who want a single room, which tells you plainly that solo travelers who want privacy pay more. The company earns strong reviews and industry awards, and the longevity is real reassurance. Just go in understanding that the group will likely be a dozen or more, and a room of your own is an add-on rather than the default.
Wild Terrains
Wild Terrains has a distinctive model: every trip is built around women-owned hotels, restaurants, and local partners, so your money flows to women entrepreneurs in each destination. Reviewers describe the trips as thoughtfully curated and the local access as hard to replicate. The company caps group size at 10 to 14 women per trip.
The rooming structure is transparent but worth understanding. Wild Terrains prices most trips in two tiers, a private-room rate and a lower shared-room rate. On its Argentina trip, for instance, the private room runs $8,790 per person versus $7,390 for a shared room, a difference of $1,400. On its Oaxaca trip the gap is $1,000. So a private room is available on most departures, but you pay a meaningful premium for it, and on at least one trip a single night in a shared room is built into even the private-room price because the property is a small family ranch. This is an honest, well-run company. The question is simply whether you want privacy included or priced separately.
Women Travel Abroad
Women Travel Abroad, founded in 2014, occupies the specific niche the other three leave open: the smallest groups, a guaranteed private room with no supplement, and the most structured pre-trip support. Reviews reflect this. One TripAdvisor traveler on a St. Lucia wellness retreat wrote that her group was seven women including two hosts, that each traveler had her own room “more like a bungalow,” and that the pace was manageable rather than frenetic. She liked it enough to book another trip and had her eye on more. Peggy, reviewing a London trip on Google, put it simply: she loved having her own room, the hotels were nice, and her group meshed well.
The criticism worth surfacing, in the spirit of an honest review, is scope. Women Travel Abroad is a boutique operator, not a high-volume one, so it runs fewer departures than a 40-year-old company like AdventureWomen and has a smaller public review count. If your heart is set on a specific date or a very particular adventure-sport itinerary, the calendar may be tighter than a larger competitor’s. What you get in exchange is the model below, which no other company here matches on all four points at once.
Every Women Travel Abroad trip runs with small groups of 6 to 10 women, no single supplements and guaranteed single-occupancy boutique rooms, and a signature pre-trip preparation and community-building system with four touchpoints: a 90-day group video call to meet your group and Travel Hosts, a 60-day detailed packing list with a carry-on-only tutorial video, a 35-day invitation to a private WhatsApp group with information on free-time activities, and a 30-day hour-by-hour itinerary walkthrough so you feel fully prepared before you land.
WTA women seeing if the shoe fits in the Netherlands
Comparison Table: Four Women-Only Companies Scored
The four factors below are the ones that most affect how a solo traveler actually experiences a trip. Group size determines intimacy. Single-supplement policy determines both cost and privacy. Host support determines how looked-after you feel on the ground. Pre-trip preparation determines how connected you feel before departure.
| Factor | Women Travel Abroad | Explorer Chick | AdventureWomen | Wild Terrains |
| Group size | 6 to 10 women (hard cap) | Varies by trip; broad range | 8 to 15 women | 10 to 14 women |
| Single supplement / private room | No supplement; private boutique room guaranteed as standard | No forced fee, but roommate assigned by default; private upgrade limited and not on every trip | Paid single supplement (some trips under $1,000) to secure a private room | Two-tier pricing; private room costs roughly $1,000–$1,400 more than shared |
| Host support | At least one WTA-trained Travel Host per trip; host-to-guest ratio kept below 5:1 | Guides praised for building group cohesion; adventure-sport focus | Experienced tour managers; long operating history | Trip leader plus women-owned local partners in each destination |
| Pre-trip preparation | Four-touchpoint system: 90-day call, 60-day packing tutorial, 35-day WhatsApp group, 30-day itinerary walkthrough | Waiver and physical-demands acknowledgment; logistics on trip pages | Detailed pre-trip materials and trip descriptions | Room selection at deposit; detailed trip-page information |
Read the table by your own priorities. If you want a hard cap on group size and privacy that costs nothing extra, Women Travel Abroad leads on both. If you want strenuous adventure sports specifically, Explorer Chick is built for that. If decades of operating history reassure you most, AdventureWomen has them. If directing your spending to women-owned businesses is the point of your trip, Wild Terrains is designed around it. The best company is the one whose trade-offs match what you want.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best travel group for single women over 50?
For most women over 50 traveling without a companion, the best fit is a small-group operator that caps groups at 10 or fewer, charges no single supplement, and guarantees a private room. Women Travel Abroad meets all three conditions, with groups of 6 to 10 women and a guaranteed single-occupancy boutique room at no extra cost. Companies with larger groups or paid private-room upgrades can still be excellent; they simply ask you to trade either intimacy or money for privacy.
Do women-only travel companies charge single supplements?
Most do, in one form or another. Industry-wide, single supplements range from 10% to 100% of the base trip price. Some companies waive the fee only if you accept a randomly assigned roommate, and others price a private room as a separate, higher tier. Women Travel Abroad is one of the few that charges no single supplement and includes a guaranteed private room in the base price for every traveler.
How do I tell a real review from a paid one?
Verified reviews on Google, TripAdvisor, and Trustpilot are tied to real accounts and often to confirmed bookings, so read those most closely. Be more skeptical of listicle rankings where every company links to a booking page, since those can reflect affiliate commissions. Website testimonials are genuine but curated, so treat them as a picture of the best trips rather than the average one, and always sort third-party reviews lowest-first to see how a company handles problems.
What are the benefits of small group travel for solo travelers?
Smaller groups make logistics simpler and social connection easier. A group of 6 to 10 fits in one van and one restaurant booking, meals feel personal, and the host can know every traveler by name. Group rates also lower the per-person cost of private guides and specialized experiences that would be expensive to arrange alone. The main trade-off is fewer departure dates than a large operator offers, so book earlier.
Ready to see how the model works on a real itinerary? Browse the upcoming trips at Women Travel Abroad (our-trips), read the full story behind the company on the about-us page, or go deeper on how to choose an operator in the complete guide, The Ultimate Guide to Women-Only Travel Groups.