Meeting People From Apps While Traveling: A Safety Checklist

Meeting strangers is the whole point of a lot of solo trips. It's also the part your family worries about. The good news is that the risk is very manageable, and the habits that manage it are quick, boring and the same everywhere.

This isn't another list of generic solo travel safety tips about money belts. It's about one specific moment: going from "someone on an app" to "someone across a table", in a city where you don't speak the language and can't yet tell one neighbourhood from another.

Before: pick the plan, not the person

• Start with groups. Dinner with four people from an app is a very different thing from a drink with one. Groups are safer, and easier too: nobody has to carry the conversation. Save one-to-one for people you've already met in a group.
• Public, busy, central. A restaurant on a main street at 8pm, not "my place" or "a bar my friend owns". If a plan's location is vague, ask for the exact spot. If you can't get one, don't go.
• Look up the venue. Thirty seconds on a map tells you whether it's a real place, whether it's open, and how you'd get home from it.
• Keep the chat in the app. Someone who wants to move to another messenger before you've even met is either keen or up to something, and there's no rush to find out which. In-app chats are where reporting and moderation work.
• Don't open links from strangers. Fake booking pages, "event tickets" and payment links are the most common scam in travel meetup apps. No plan ever needs you to pay someone you haven't met. (It's why Suppertime blocks links in chats altogether.)

Tell one person

If you keep only one habit from this list, keep this one. Before you go, send one person at home, or a friend you've made on the road, the place, the time and a screenshot of the plan. Share your live location with them for the evening; both iPhone and Android can do it. Agree a time you'll message to say you're back. It takes a minute and almost always turns out to be unnecessary, which is exactly how it should be.

During: keep your exits easy

• Get there and back on your own. Know how you're getting home before you leave. Have the local rideshare app set up and some cash. Don't take a lift from someone you've just met.
• Keep your phone charged. A small power bank is the best safety device you'll ever buy.
• Watch your drink, and your count. Order your own, keep it in sight, and know your limit in a place where you don't know the way home.
• Be vague about where you're staying. "Near the old town" is plenty. The name of your guesthouse can wait for people you've known longer than an evening.
• Leave whenever you like. You don't owe anyone a full evening. We wrote a whole guide to leaving a group or a conversation gracefully, because knowing you can go is what makes it easy to say yes.

Trust the small feeling

Most bad situations announce themselves early with something small: pressure to move somewhere quieter, someone very insistent on buying every round, a story that doesn't quite add up, a "group" that turns out to be one person. You don't need a reason that would stand up in court. "I'm pretty tired, I'm going to head off" is a complete sentence, and you never have to say it twice.

Extra notes for women traveling alone

Everything above applies, plus a few habits experienced solo female travelers swear by:

• Start with women-only plans while you're new to a city. On Suppertime you can join one, or host your own so only women can join. We wrote a whole guide to women-only meetups for solo female travelers.
• Arrive in daylight on your first day somewhere new, so the walk from the station isn't your first look at the city in the dark.
• Have a ready answer to "are you here alone?" if you'd rather not say. "Meeting friends later" works fine.
• Save the local emergency number. 112 works across the EU and is redirected on many mobile networks elsewhere, but look up the local number wherever you go.

After: report, don't just block

If someone made you uncomfortable, report them in the app as well as blocking them. Blocking protects you; reporting protects the next solo traveler they message. On a moderated app, a person reads every report.

How we built Suppertime around this

Most of this checklist is built into how Suppertime works. Everything happens in small group plans with a time and a place, and there are no one-to-one DMs at all. Links are blocked in chats, so nobody can send you a fake payment page. Each plan's chat disappears when the plan's over, so there's no long tail of strangers in your messages. Plans can be women-only or LGBTQ+ friendly. And every report is reviewed. Open it in your city, find a dinner with a few people already going, and tell a friend where you'll be. It's free on iOS.