TikTok Influences on Female Solo Travellers

Abstract

This study investigates how TikTok influences female solo travellers by examining the platform’s content characteristics, engagement features, and motivational messages that shape women travellers' perceptions and behavioural intentions. A qualitative content analysis was conducted using 70 TikTok short videos related to female solo travel. Data were collected from captions, hashtags, comments, likes, shares, and favourites, and analysed thematically through the Stimulus Organism Response Theory to explain how digital stimuli trigger psychological reactions and behavioural responses. The results indicate that TikTok significantly encourages female solo travel through empowering narratives, destination inspiration, and interactive community engagement. “Empowerment and motivation” was the most dominant theme, appearing in 48 posts and generating the highest average engagement of 4,196,794 likes, followed by self-identity and growth (25 posts) and destination highlights (13 posts). Caption tone analysis found empowering captions as the most frequent (22.42%), followed by excited (13.94%) and inspirational (11.52%). Hashtag analysis showed #solotravel as the leading tag (45%), while comment themes were dominated by empowerment (17.25%), desire to start (14.98%), and inspiration (11.75%), reflecting behavioural readiness among viewers. Tourism marketers and destination managers can leverage authentic female travel stories, empowering captions, and strategic hashtags to attract women travellers. This study contributes to emerging tourism literature by analysing real TikTok content rather than self-reported surveys, offering fresh insight into how short-form social media shapes contemporary female travel behaviour.