Last updated on August 31st, 2025
Inspiring women to travel for over 30 years
Welcome to JourneyWoman: The first solo travel website in the world
Welcome to JourneyWoman, the world’s largest and most trusted resource for female solo travel. Founded in 1994, we are the world’s original solo travel publication for women, founded in Toronto, Canada by the late Evelyn Hannon in 1994. Evelyn is regarded as the first travel writer to focus on women’s solo travel and influenced significant change in the travel industry. Evelyn inspired a sisterhood of women, a grassroots movement, to inspire women to travel safely and well, and to connect women travellers around the world. She passed away in 2019, but her legacy lives on.
In 2019, JourneyWoman was acquired by family friend Carolyn Ray. Carolyn aspires to help women live the life of their dreams by embracing conscious, sustainable travel that empowers ALL women – from traveller to community. Carolyn combines her passion for travel, women’s empowerment and experience as a marketing executive and entrepreneur to create the world’s largest resource for women who love travel. In 2023, Carolyn was recognized by TravelPulse as one of the most influential women in travel. At age 50, after a successful career, Carolyn sold everything she owned to travel the world and now lives simply for most of the year, travelling for months at a time to lesser-known places in the low season. Read more about Carolyn’s story in “From High Heels to Hiking Boots: How I Reinvented My Life to Travel Full Time”.
What we believe: our values
At JourneyWoman, we celebrate women’s wisdom and the joy of discovery that purposeful travel brings. Together, we are inspired to make our world a safer and more inclusive place. As the original solo travel publication for women in the world, we have represented the voices of mature women for over 30 years, providing a trusted platform for women over 50. Our values are manifested in everything we do, across our editorial, diverse representation on our advisory council and editorial team, our own staff and through our Women’s Travel Directory.
We make our own rules
- Rather than follow the crowd, we lead by example through our own behaviours and actions. This includes simple things like never having paid advertising on our site as a business model, to inventing new ways to support and sustain our website and editorial.
- We tell it like it is, without being influenced by paid endorsements. Our writers include professional accredited travel writers, not paid influencers. We only write about places we have been to and products we use ourselves.
- We provoke dialogue on topics that other publications may not want to – like women’s solo safety, human trafficking, period poverty, diversity, positive aging, menopause and other real-life discussions that deserve attention
We seek to inspire and empower women
- Not only have we inspired women to live the life of their dreams for 30 years, but we also seek to support women-owned businesses and entrepreneurs through our award-winning editorial features, Women’s Travel Directory and Women’s Speaker’s Bureau, created in 2023 to help more women find speaking engagements
- We have supported the Soul of Travel Podcast, a platform for amplifying women’s voices, since 2023
JourneyWoman CEO Carolyn Ray at Abu Simbel in Egypt, where history shows us how small we are / Photo by Carolyn Ray
- For our 30th anniversary, we self-published a new book profiling 30 trailblazing women in travel: “Never Too Late: How Women Travellers 50+ Are Making the Rules”
- To showcase smaller travel companies, women 50+ entrepreneurs and solo women over 50 we created the JourneyWoman Awards for Women Over 50 in 2023
- In 2025, we invested in a global study to raise awareness of women over 50 in travel, called “Invisible No More: The Ageless Adventuress” and offer consulting services to help the travel industry adapt to and better serve older women.
We strive to be kind to our world
- We recognize that travel is a privilege experienced by few, not many, and honour the role of women as role models and influencers to create positive change, while showing gratitude for the gift of travel to broaden our perspective and outlook
- We also recognize that travel creates environmental challenges including overtourism, so we focus on sustainable ways to travel, including longer stays, off-season travel, less-travelled places. No 24-hours in a city articles here! In our editorial and Women’s Travel Directory, we do not feature large ships or all-inclusive resorts unless they are locally owned.
- We understand the important role of travel in improving gender equity and the UN SDGs and require our team and writers to align with ethical standards
- We support non-profit organizations recommended by our readers, including The Period Purse (period poverty), Ally Group (human trafficking) and wmnsWork (gender equity for entrepreneurs). We also partner with organizations that advocate for better representation in travel and sustainable, conscious travel, including Women in Travel CIC and Rise Travel Institute. We are members of Travel Unity, the Transformational Travel Council and the Society of American Travel Writers (SATW). We invite our readers and partners to consider making donations to these organizations or volunteering as appropriate.
“When our mother started JourneyWoman over 25 years ago, she unknowingly became the world’s first female travel blogger and built a sisterhood of women travellers,” said Evelyn Hannon’s daughter, Erica Ehm, Founder and CEO of Ehm&Co. “Not only does Carolyn share many of our mother’s values, we believe her passion for travel and her strategic mindset will enhance Journeywoman’s brand as a trusted source for women. We can’t imagine anyone better suited to extend our mother’s legacy.”
What is a JourneyWoman?
Being a JourneyWoman is a mindset. It’s not just about age or experience. As JourneyWomen, we take the first step into the future, with curiosity as our compass, seeking authenticity in every experience and being intentional about where and how we spend our hard-earned travel dollars. We know the world is watching — and learning — from us.
At JourneyWoman, we embrace four guiding principles: We Seek, We Learn, We Teach, We Act
We seek
We seek real life, not perfection. Significance, not simplicity. We pursue the wisdom of history, the beauty of culture, and the wonder in our world, found in moments both expansively big and surprisingly small. We are aware and accountable for the impact of our decisions on our shared earth and recognize that travel is a privilege, not a right.
We learn
We are curious. We get off the bus. We walk. We ask questions. We know travel isn’t about counting countries or marks on a map. We bring our whole, authentic selves to every encounter. We respect the world as it is and ask how we can contribute rather than impose our beliefs. We make every effort to support women-owned businesses when we travel.
We teach
We are teachers, role models and mentors, and we share our stories with intention and purpose. We learn from one another, respecting the diversity of our human experience. We seek to empower women and girls and contribute to local communities – when invited – through our actions and volunteerism.
We act
We advocate for positive change in ourselves and in others. We know that as women, we are travel’s most influential decision makers. We use our voices to inspire others to fulfill their purpose. We speak out when we witness inequity and influence others to treat each other and our world with love, gratitude and respect.
The late Evelyn Hannon, the Original JourneyWoman, recognized as the world’s first solo travel writer for women.
Carolyn and Evelyn’s daughter, Erica Ehm (R), with Evelyn’s iconic red boots and the original JourneyWoman newsletter circa 1994, announcing the transition of JourneyWoman to Carolyn in August 2019.