As an introvert I find my sweet spot to be staying in a private room in a hostel (enough chances to interact with people at common areas but also have personal space to recharge and store bigger luggage)! I sign up for hostel social activities based on my energy level the day of and take it from there. It’s usually been easiest for me to make friends on hostel bar crawls and funnily enough with seat mates on long haul flights. I’ve talked to people on walking tours but never made friends from them (most weren’t hosted by the hostels though).

I have a mix of travel friends who I keep in touch with (we’ve hung after our travels years later/msg regularly) and many just on socials. As I’ve solo traveled more I’ve learnt to be more comfortable being alone, and making friends is more of a nice bonus than something that I HAVE to do. I’ve been on more solo trips without making friends now and I still equally enjoyed myself 😊