Women Travelers Are Not a Segment

Join Women Leading Travel June 8 – 10 in New Orleans to connect with executives across the industry, access original research and leadership insights.

Here’s a Skift Research stat the travel industry has been citing for years: 82% of travel decisions are influenced by women. And the industry’s response has been largely the same: more female-forward imagery, a few wellness add-ons, and a campaign brief that says “women 35-54.”

But that is not strategy. It is lazy demographics with a marketing budget.

The core problem is that gender is being treated as a proxy for preference when it explains almost nothing about what a traveler values, how she makes decisions, or what she is worth to a business over time.

Skift’s 2025 Intrepid Traveler research, a large-scale attitudinal and behavioral study spanning tens of thousands of respondents across multiple