The Bali Retreat Redefining Solo Travel for Women

The first thing you hear when you arrive at Goddess Retreats in Ubud, Bali, is not a standard hotel greeting. Welcoming staff members step forward with warm smiles and open arms, offering a phrase that feels almost disarmingly sincere: “Hello goddess, welcome home.”

The scent of sandalwood incense drifts through the air, and everywhere you look, small hand-woven Canang Sari, the flower offerings that Balinese Hindus place daily as expressions of gratitude, dot the property.

Solo Travel Continues To Rise Among Women

Across the globe, women are traveling solo in record numbers. Nearly 40 percent of female travelers expressed interest in setting out alone in 2025, up 8 points from the previous year, according to research from tourism firm Future Partners.

Women now account for roughly 84 percent of all solo travelers worldwide, and the global solo travel market, valued at $482 billion in 2024, is projected to more than double to $1 trillion by 2030. Indonesia ranks consistently among the top destinations driving those visa applications, and Bali, with its spiritual density and open-hearted hospitality, sits at the center of that pull.

Goddess Retreats has been answering that call since 2003, long before women-only wellness travel became a talking point in the travel industry. Founded by Australian expat Chelsea Ross, who has called Bali home for decades, the retreat was born from a frustration most wellness travelers will recognize.

Ross had sought transformation at retreat after retreat, only to find programs that felt too corporate, too generic, or simply not designed with women’s actual needs at the center. So she built one herself.

A Retreat Designed Around Women’s Experiences

The result is something harder to categorize than a standard luxury wellness retreat. Goddess Retreats sits in the lush interior of Ubud, surrounded by jungle and the kind of quiet that genuinely slows your nervous system. Accommodations are luxurious without feeling sterile. Chef-prepared local meals arrive three times a day, rooted in Balinese ingredients and tradition.

The spa menu is extensive, from traditional Balinese massage to specialty flower baths and in-house treatments. But the architecture of the experience goes well beyond the physical.

Guests have access to local healers and spiritual practitioners. Yoga and meditation anchor the mornings. Afternoons might unfold through an offering-making ceremony at a nearby temple, a cycling route through rice paddies, river rafting, a silversmithing workshop, or simply time alone with nowhere to be.

Evenings tend toward connection, conversation, and the kind of companionable silence that forms between women who have stopped pretending they are fine.

Guests Arrive at Different Life Crossroads

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The women you meet here tell their own version of the same underlying story. During a recent stay, the guest list included a young single mother from New York City working to rebuild her sense of self. A real estate agent from South Dakota had arrived with two lifelong friends, each of them standing at a different crossroads. A retired attorney was navigating the identity shift that comes after a long career. A medicinal herb specialist from Australia, a young traveler from New Zealand, and a police officer from Ireland, who was searching for stillness while processing a cancer diagnosis and its aftermath, rounded out a group that had nothing obvious in common and quickly became something like family.

For Elle, an Australian medicinal herb specialist making her first solo trip abroad, the retreat delivered something she hadn’t known to ask for. “It’s all these solo women coming together and holding space for each other,” she said. “The staff are looking after you every single day. Anything you want, they come to you.” She laughed, describing the afternoon she mentioned wanting a pair of custom cowboy boots. Within minutes, the team had arranged a driver and sent her directly to a leather-goods district. “Being by myself in a different country, not knowing the language or the customs,” she said, “the fact that I had someone there to look after me the whole time was really helpful.”

That range, from the early twenties to the late sixties, solo travelers and small friend groups, women from entirely different countries and life stages, is not accidental. It reflects what Ross understood when she started: transformation is not demographic. Loss, transition, burnout, and the quiet ache of having misplaced yourself somewhere along the way do not observe age brackets.

Intact and Pacing Set the Retreat Apart

What Goddess Retreats offers that distinguishes it from more polished, higher-volume wellness brands is intimacy and intentional pacing. The schedule holds space for both. There is enough structure to carry you through a week and looseness enough to let something genuine happen inside it. The bonds that form between guests are not created solely through group activities. They grow in the pauses, over shared meals, during long walks to temples, or in the simple act of sitting together while Bali does what Bali does.

Two Locations Offer Distinct Experiences

For those who want to extend the experience, Goddess Retreats also operates a second location in Seminyak, on Bali’s southern coast. Where Ubud invites stillness and spiritual inquiry, Seminyak leans physical and active, with programming built around surfing, padel, Pilates, and coastal energy. Many guests plan back-to-back weeks at both locations, designing a full arc of experience rather than a single retreat.

An Industry Adapting to Solo Female Travel

The travel industry has spent recent years rushing to catch up with what women actually want when they travel alone, adding solo cabins on cruise ships, dropping single supplements, and launching women-only tour departures. Goddess Retreats has been quietly getting it right for more than two decades, which may explain why its TripAdvisor reviews read more like letters of gratitude than hotel feedback.

“I didn’t know what to expect,” one guest wrote. “But all of my expectations were exceeded.”

For the women sitting in the arrivals area of Ngurah Rai International Airport, scrolling through retreat options while trying to figure out what they need, that consistency of outcome matters. Bali has always drawn seekers. Goddess Retreats gives them somewhere specific to land.

For more information and booking, visit goddessretreats.com

This post originally appeared on Guessing Headlights.