Travel & Hospitality
How Brands Can Reach Women Travelers
Report summary
Women make up over half the population, but less than half of the traveling public. That’s not due to a lack of desire or interest in getting away though — female travelers are often hindered by factors that are beyond their control. For some, it’s financial worries. For others, it’s family responsibilities. And for most, it’s safety concerns. Brands must help women navigate these forces to encourage more participation in the sector and deepen loyalty among the ones who are already engaged.
Morning Consult’s report How Brands Can Reach Women Travelers explores the preferences, behaviors and expectations of women who travel. Based on a combination of monthly industry surveys and data from Morning Consult’s Intelligence platform, this report provides insights into how the cohort is thinking about and engaging with the travel and hospitality industry today.
Key Takeaways
- Women travel less than men for leisure and business: Multiple barriers keep women from traveling, from affordability to domestic responsibilities to concerns about safety.
- Occasion-specific travel motivators are on the rise: While female travelers are most likely to travel to relax, get away and spend time with loved ones, more specific reasons, such as traveling for an event, are becoming more popular.
- Female travelers aren’t a monolith: A key difference is accommodation preferences, where younger female travelers are more likely than older ones to use vacation rentals.
- Female business travelers are young, diverse and optimistic: Despite traveling for work less than men, working women are blending business and leisure travel in the name of personal and professional balance.
Data Downloads
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Methodology
Research featured in this report draws from several data sources:
- Morning Consult’s travel & hospitality tracker, conducted monthly from October 2021 to February 2025 among roughly 2,200 U.S. adults per month
- A survey on business and blended travel conducted Oct. 23-25, 2024, among 1,124 employed U.S. adults.
- Morning Consult’s Intelligence platform
The interviews were conducted online, and the data was weighted to approximate respective populations of adults based on gender, educational attainment, race and region. Top-line results from all surveys have margins of error of up to +/-2 percentage points.
About the author
Lindsey Roeschke is an analyst whose work focuses on behavior and expectations of consumers in the travel & hospitality and food & beverage categories, particularly through a generational and cultural lens. Prior to joining Morning Consult, she served as a director of consumer and culture analysis at Gartner. In addition to her research and advisory background, Lindsey has more than a decade of experience in the advertising world. She has lived and worked in seven cities across four continents.
