The problem with putting people in boxes

I am 50 years old. And sometimes I travel solo. So I suppose that makes me a female solo traveller over 50.

I’m sure my fellow solo travellers over fifty are a wonderful bunch. But do we all fit neatly into the same box?

I’m an occasional solo traveller, and more usually travel with my husband and five year-old (And then there’s my two grown-up children who might also  come with me if I ask nicely (and foot the bill).

Which makes me quite different from a seventy-year-old widow travelling alone for the first time since she lost her husband. Or the sixty-year-old who’s been solo travelling since her twenties and has been doing this since before solo female travel was a trend.

We are all, technically, solo travellers over fifty. But we likely want different things.

And yet travel businesses — including, possibly, yours — are writing emails to us as if we are one person. One set of desires, one set of fears, one set of reasons to book.

This is the problem I want to talk about today.

Email is intimacy: don’t waste it

Before we get into how to fix it, I want to say something about email as a medium. Because I think it’s underestimated.

Email is not a billboard. It’s not a social post that a thousand people scroll past on their way to something else. It lands in someone’s personal inbox — a space that, even in 2026, still feels relatively private. It’s a chance to whisper directly into your ideal traveller’s ear.

That’s why email works so well when it works. And that’s exactly why it fails so badly when it doesn’t.

When you write to your entire list with that hello everyone in this particular demographic energy — even with the best intentions, even with lovely content — you’ve picked up a megaphone and aimed it at a crowd. And nobody in that crowd feels spoken to. They feel broadcast at. There’s a world of difference, and your readers feel it even if they can’t quite put their finger on why.

The intimacy of email is one of the greatest tools an independent travel business has. It’s the thing the OTAs can’t replicate, the thing that makes someone choose your small-group tour over a package deal. Squandering that intimacy by treating your list like a demographic is, to put it plainly, a waste of a very good channel.

So what’s the answer?

Start with the research  – but don’t stop there.

If you google “ideal client avatar” or “ideal traveller profile,” you’ll find no shortage of questionnaires. They’re worth doing. A good one will push you beyond the obvious demographics — age, income, where your reader lives — into the stuff that matters for your copy. What does your ideal traveller lie awake thinking about? What has held them back from booking until now? What do they need to believe before they’ll hand over their money to you rather than someone else?

These are rich, useful questions. And the exercise is worth revisiting regularly, not just once, because your ideal traveller can shift as your business evolves. The person you were serving three years ago might not be the person you’re serving now. It’s worth staying honest about that.

If you’d like a questionnaire specifically designed for travel businesses — not a generic marketing template, but one that gets into the particular texture of travel decision-making — drop me a message and I’ll send you the one I use with my coaching clients.

Where most travel businesses go wrong

Solo women travellers over fifty. Deep travellers. Digital nomads. You write with this group energy, this dear valued demographic energy. And however good your research was, the writing still comes out flat. Because you’re not talking to anyone. You’re broadcasting at everyone.

The research tells you who your reader is. It doesn’t automatically make you write to her.

The One Reader Rule

This is where something I call the One Reader Rule comes in.

Instead of picturing all the travellers you’ve ever met, or the entire database sitting on your list — think of one conversation you’ve had. One real person whose face you can picture. It doesn’t have to be someone who’s booked. It could be someone who loved the sound of your trips but kept putting it off for the right moment — the right year, when the kids are older, when work settles down. You know the one. You’ve probably had that conversation more than once.

Write that person’s name at the top of your draft.

Not in the salutation — just at the top, for your eyes only. A small reminder of who you’re actually talking to. Then write to her. Or him. Or them. Just that one person.

Something shifts almost immediately. Your tone changes. You stop hedging. You stop trying to cover every possible reader. You just talk. And talking, it turns out, is far more interesting to read than broadcasting.

One important thing before you hit send: delete the name from the top. You don’t want everyone on your list getting Hello Penelope if they happen to be a Bob or a Harry.

Where to find your one reader

If you’re not sure who your one reader is, go back through your sent folder. The real conversations are in there: the exchanges that felt easy, the replies that made you think yes, that’s exactly it. One of those people is probably her.

And if the idea of narrowing down to one reader feels counterintuitive ( like you’re excluding people)  I hear this a lot, and I disagree. The emails that feel written for one specific person are the ones that make every reader think this was written for me. That’s not a paradox. That’s just how good writing works.

The One Reader Rule is the first thing I work on with every travel business I coach, because everything else — the stories, the subject lines, the asks — gets easier once you know who you’re actually talking to.

Want to go deeper with this?

If you’re the kind of travel business owner who wants to write emails that  connect, I think you’d love Club Campion. It’s my free newsletter — out every Monday and Thursday — and it’s where I share my musings on travel copy. 

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