This Solo Travel Company Is Back With 17 New Trips — From Tanzania's Wildebeest Migration to a Northern Lights Tour of Iceland
After shuttering its business last November, Flash Pack is back with its trips specially designed for solo travelers in their 30s and 40s — and the 17 newly curated itineraries promise more meaningful and inspired experiences than ever.
"We have spent the last 12 months obsessing over details, pouring over customer feedback, data, and insights from our guides, and refining every single trip from the ground up," co-founder Lee Thompson told Travel + Leisure. "For our relaunch, we've refined our portfolio from 74 trips to 17 to allow us to focus on these details and ensure that every traveler experiences something truly special — and a little unexpected."
The relaunched company's new trips include short-break vacations of five days or less in Finland, Iceland, and Mexico City, as well as long-haul trips of eight to 12 days in Argentina, Bali, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Japan, Jordan, Morocco, Peru, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Turkey, and Vietnam.
"Our itineraries focus on delivering experiences that would either be very hard to do alone — such as hiking the secret backdoor to Petra in Jordan or having lunch with a sumo wrestler in Japan — or that would be too expensive — like staying on a private arctic island in Finland or sleeping in converted land rovers in the Serengeti in Tanzania and waking up for the greatest show on Earth," he added. "The best thing about group travel is that, not only do travelers get to meet a bunch of like-minded people, but it opens up so many opportunities that would be nearly impossible to do on your own."
Other highlights include the Argentina getaway with a candlelit dinner in a prehistoric cave in Patagonia and making your own wine in Mendoza, and the Iceland tour led by a Northern Lights photographer, which includes a freezing water immersion with a cold water therapy guru.
Thompson and fellow co-founder Radha Vyas came up with the idea on their first date in 2012. Two years later, the couple — who are now married — launched Flash Pack and began to connect travelers who had outgrown the lower-budget group tours geared toward 20-somethings, but also weren't quite ready for the often slower-paced vacations that were typically filled with travelers over the age of 50. Instead, these trips focus on bucket-list destinations with itineraries that mix both the adventurous spirit and luxurious touches. But at the core, the company is really about fostering friendships among travelers.
"We believe that adventure and travel are both powerful ingredients that help facilitate the creation of life-long friendships, and each of our trips has been specifically designed to build just that," Thompson said. "For example in South Africa, travelers abseil Table Mountain on day one, taking people out of their comfort zone in a shared experience [that] opens them up to these connections."
The pandemic downtime has brought that mission to to the forefront of these new itineraries. "While it's clear travel will bounce back in a huge way, we need meaningful connections more than ever," he told T+L, adding that 80 percent of past Flash Pack travelers keep in touch with their travelmates. Before the pause, the company created 50,000 friendships in just 2019.
"The pandemic has led to isolation and the feeling of loneliness," Thompson said. "So we are on a mission to create one million meaningful friendships across the globe."
