New
research out from Halifax Travel Insurance has found that in the past year, nearly
nine million Brits left partners and/or families at home to travel with
their mates. Instead of spending their free time at the local pub or at a football
match, busy people are making more time to holiday with their friends.

Single-sex holidays are growing quickly in popularity. Compared with five
years ago, more than two-thirds of Britons are now travelling with groups
of friends. While about one in four of these trips are the popular stag or
hen weekends, 36% of these trips were for the sole purpose of catching up
with friends. Schoolmates, neighbourhood pals, sports teams and office
getaways are just a few of the groups now travelling together. These trends
have been spotted by Pissup.com, a leading stag organiser in Eastern
Europe. Three years ago, the company was almost entirely focused on stags,
but now this market has dropped to about 70% of their business; with other
group holidaymakers making up the rest.

“We’ll see a group of lads who go every weekend to see Liverpool play,”
says Neil Smith, Sales Manager for Pissup.com, Eastern Europe’s biggest
party organiser. “But once the football season is over, they are so used to
spending their weekends together; they’ll decide to spend it on a trip to
somewhere like Prague.”

Low-cost flights to inexpensive cities in central and eastern Europe are
encouraging this trend. It’s easy to arrange for some fun, stress-free
quality time, with the added bonus of travelling to a new city.

“It’s not just accommodation people are looking for when they are planning
a trip for a group of friends,” says Mark Robertson, Pissup.com’s Tour
Manager. “They want to make sure everyone has something to do, and has a
good time doing it.”

Tour operators know that just putting a group of people into a city and
giving them a place to sleep isn’t going to cut it. Pissup.com, for
example, offers a range of activities for all types of groups. From pub
crawls and sightseeing tours in all its cities to spa visits in Budapest,
military jet flights in Prague, zorbing in Bratislava, canoeing in Tallinn
and football matches in Warsaw, something for everyone can be found.

Whether it’s the end of a sports season, a mate’s upcoming marriage or 30th
birthday, or an excuse for colleagues to escape their desks for some
quality socialising, trips abroad continue to be the busy friend’s solution
to the age old question: “When are we going to get together?”
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