A growing number of people are travelling alone for holidays, yet limited research addresses this topic. This paper explores the main motivators and drivers of satisfaction and dissatisfaction for solo holiday travellers using a critical incident technique to collect and analyse data. The findings show that drivers of satisfaction for solo holiday travellers are more related to personal feelings of freedom, relaxation and discovery (personal factors) and interaction with other people (human interaction factors) than with holiday destination factors. Safety (a destination factor) and unfriendly service providers (a human interaction factor) are the main sources of dissatisfaction for solo holiday travellers. Copyright (c) 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.