How to survive a group holiday as the token solo friend

If you’re among the millions of Australians who suggest a long weekend getaway on the coast or in the bush with your closest group of long-time friends, I’m taking a guess you’re not single, and you probably have kids.

Let me explain. The nation has long been totally, utterly obsessed with travelling. Maybe it’s because we’re marooned on a giant island at the bottom of the world and keen to see what’s going on elsewhere, or perhaps it’s because there’s simply nothing better than an interstate road trip filled with pit stops at country bakeries.

It’s likely a combination of these things and many more, but whatever the reasons, travelling far, wide and often is basically a national pastime.

Australians continue to spend big on holidays despite cost of living pressures. Credit: iStock

Even as the cost of living continues to bite, Australians are still spending up on domestic and international holidays. Some age demographics are spending even more than in previous years. Between June 2023 and June 2024, for example, Australians took more than 11 million outbound trips to overseas destinations, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics – an increase of 32 per cent on the year before.

This stands to reason, considering the virus that shall not be named kept us from international travel for a couple of years, and gave us ample time to save for our next holiday.

Domestically, though, things get really interesting. According to Tourism Research Australia, in the 12 months to September 2024, Australians spent $110.3 billion on interstate and intrastate holidays alone, with an average spend of $963 a trip, or $277 a night. This equated to a cool 397.4 million nights spent away from home in favour of another part of Australia, averaging three nights per trip.

Of the total of 114.5 million trips in the year, about three-quarters – 86.1 million, to be precise – were holidays or visits to family and friends. Think Easter, Christmas, school holidays, long weekends or a weekend getaway to celebrate a milestone birthday.

If you’re thinking these figures are some kind of crazy one off, they’re far from it. Compared with the 2022–23 figures, the amount spent on domestic travel increased by just 1 per cent, while the number of trips rose by just 3 per cent. There was a decline in the length of trips, of just 1 per cent.

All of this brings me to the sticky point of our love of travelling, that of navigating finances with your friends and family when you’re on holiday. The great thing about travelling in groups – apart from the hours of laughing with your favourite people and memory making – is that it generally saves you money on the likes of accommodation, food and transport.

You may be well and truly out of your backpacking around Europe on a shoestring budget era, but enjoying the best Airbnbs can still be expensive, and having a designated driver to ferry you to and from the afternoon winery tour, instead of having to pay $75 a head for the shuttle bus, is always a win.

Then there are other perks, such as assigning couples to cook each night, and being able to choose which activities you pay to do, knowing that if your partner wants to do something you don’t feel like they’ll still have someone else to go with.

If all of this sounds pretty good, and you’re wondering what the issue is, you’re probably in a couple, as I speculated earlier. But if you’ve heard the little cash register inside your head ringing up expenses, you’re probably among the 26 per cent of Australians who are single.

I’ve written before about how astronomically expensive it is to be single in Australia now, and that especially rings true when it comes to travel. The most obvious split expense on a holiday is, of course, accommodation.

Here’s an example: Say you book a four-bedroom beach house for three nights, at $500 a night, with three couples and one single person coming along. If you’re in a couple, the total accommodation spend comes out to under $200 a head for the entire trip.

If you’re on your own, it’ll set you back $375. And that’s before you get to the politics of who sleeps in the room with bunk beds (it’s invariably always the single person), who gets the bedroom with an ensuite, or if any of the couples travelling have kids, which most (myself included) do.

For some, travelling light is impossible.Credit: Simon Letch

I’m not saying that couples should uninvite their single friends from a holiday or offer to pay for their share of the getaway, or that single people should feel bad for not having a plus one.

Yet, I’ve seen seemingly small issues like these end relationships – romantic and platonic – more times than I care to count because when we avoid having conversations that might be tricky or uncomfortable in the moment, they tend to fester and become a bigger issue than they need to be.

Far too many people avoid money discussions like the plague and just hope for the problem to go away. But when you don’t talk about a major issue in your life with the people you love, you can quickly start to feel unappreciated or undervalued, or that your friends and family either don’t care or aren’t really paying attention to how your life differs from theirs.

If the options are having a conversation about splitting costs a different way on your next holiday, not having one at all, or having someone missing out, I know which one I’ll take. Because missing out, when you think about it, would be simply unAustralian.

Victoria Devine is an award-winning retired financial adviser, bestselling author and host of Australia’s No.1 finance podcast, She’s on the Money. She is also the founder and co-director of Zella Money.

• Advice given in this article is general in nature and is not intended to influence readers’ decisions about investing or financial products. They should always seek their own professional advice that takes into account their own personal circumstances before making any financial decisions.

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