The Plus-One Problem

A business traveller finishes another dinner alone. A newcomer knows the city’s transit map but has no one to explore it with. A single professional has hundreds of contacts and still hesitates to RSVP to a wedding without a guest.

None of them lacks a phone full of people. What they lack is someone for this dinner, this walk, this Saturday. That’s a narrower problem than loneliness, and a more solvable one.

I know this gap personally. Since 2000, my consulting work has taken me across Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. The days were demanding, but the evenings could feel even longer. Once the meetings ended, I’d return to my hotel room and flip between TV channels, or stare out at a city I had no one to experience with. I didn’t want a tour guide or an itinerary. I wanted a trusted local person to meet for dinner, coffee or a real conversation: someone who could show me the city through a local lens. That wish stayed with me for years, and it became the idea behind Meet n Greet Worldwide: a safe, respectful and strictly platonic way to connect beyond the four walls of a hotel room.

The scale is real

In the first quarter of 2024, 13% of Canadians aged 15 and older said they always or often felt lonely.1 The World Health Organization’s 2025 Commission on Social Connection estimates loneliness affects one in six people worldwide and links it to depression, anxiety, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and premature death.2

Loneliness isn’t the same as being alone. It’s the gap between the connection you want and the connection you have.3 You can live alone, travel alone or be single and feel fine. You can be married, surrounded by colleagues and online all day, and feel cut off. Loneliness isn’t a character flaw. It’s a signal.

The standard advice skips the hardest step

Most advice on loneliness says the same thing: join something. Volunteer, take a class, find a group. It’s good advice, but it assumes the hard part is knowing where to go. For many people, the hard part is walking in alone.

Cost, mobility, language, safety, confidence and unpredictable schedules all sit between wanting to take part and actually showing up. Here’s what that looks like for five groups.

Business travellers. Repeated trips break routines and separate people from those who keep them grounded. Hotel rooms, solo meals and transactional conversations leave little room for relaxed contact. Research on this group is thin, but a 2024 Booking.com for Business survey of 502 U.S. business travellers found loneliness topped their mental-health concerns, cited by 24%.4 Employers can help by protecting time for calls home, offering optional hosted meals and allowing recovery time after demanding trips.

Seniors. Retirement, bereavement, reduced mobility and lost access to transportation can shrink a social world quickly. But age alone doesn’t predict loneliness. Statistics Canada found that 10% of Canadians aged 65 and older always or often felt lonely in early 2024, lower than younger groups.1 Reviews of interventions find no single fix; what works is matched to the person.5 Senior centres, accessible transit, intergenerational programs and regular calls all play a part.

Gen Z. The loneliest group in the data is also the most connected one. In early 2024, 17% of Canadians aged 15 to 24 said they always or often felt lonely, the highest rate of any age group.1 Technology isn’t the only cause; online spaces sustain real friendships. But contact isn’t closeness. Economic uncertainty, remote school and work, and the jump from school to career all make stable in-person ties harder to build.

Newcomers. Immigration can separate people from their language, relatives and professional identity all at once. Statistics Canada’s analysis of the 2018 General Social Survey found higher average loneliness among both recent and long-term immigrants aged 15 to 64 than among Canadian-born people.6 Settlement agencies, language programs and cultural groups do essential work. What they rarely provide is someone to explore a neighbourhood with on a Sunday.

Single adults. Being single isn’t the problem; many single people lead full, connected lives. The problem is that invitations, tables and events are often built for couples. Relocation, remote work and shifting friendships remove the spontaneous contact that used to fill the gap. Living alone is also increasingly common. In the 2021 Census, one-person households made up 25.1% of all households in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area, and 33.2% in the City of Toronto: 385,765 households, up 7.2% since 2016.7 Living alone doesn’t mean being lonely, or even single. But it does mean fewer chances for spontaneous connection at home.

What works

The WHO calls for coordinated action across policy, research, interventions and measurement.2 In practice, every level has a job. Individuals build recurring routines. Employers protect relationships and build inclusive cultures. Communities offer accessible gathering places and facilitated introductions. Governments fund transit, digital inclusion and social prescribing, which in Canada lets health providers connect people with non-clinical community services.8

The common thread is that good solutions fit the person. Some people need a group. Some need practical support or professional care. And some need one person, for one occasion, so they don’t have to go alone.

Where companionship fits, and where it doesn’t

Meet n Greet Worldwide offers vetted local companions for strictly platonic, in-person experiences: a dinner, a walk, a gallery, a plus-one for a wedding or a work event. Companions go through identity verification, RCMP-accredited criminal record checks and onboarding, under a platonic-only policy.9

As the founder, I have an obvious stake here, so I want to be precise about what this is. Paid companionship is not a cure for loneliness, and it isn’t purchased friendship. It’s a bridge. It removes the friction between wanting to take part and having someone appropriate to take part with. It should never replace healthcare, caregiving, family, settlement services or emergency support.

Anyone working in this space, including us, should be held to clear standards: firm boundaries, identity verification, real screening, transparent pricing, informed consent, privacy protection, easy reporting and extra safeguards wherever someone may be vulnerable.

One shared table

Connection rarely starts with a transformation. It starts with one conversation, one meal, one event that felt possible because someone else was there. Often, the first step toward belonging is simply not having to walk in alone.

If company would make an outing, event or everyday errand easier, Meet n Greet Worldwide is one respectful, strictly platonic way to take that step: www.meetngreetww.com

References

1.          Statistics Canada. (2024, July 30). You’ve got a friend in me [Loneliness by age group, Q1 2024].

2.          World Health Organization. (2025, June 30). From loneliness to social connection: Charting a path to healthier societies. Report of the WHO Commission on Social Connection.

3.          U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Health effects of social isolation and loneliness.

4.          Booking.com for Business. (2024). Survey of 502 U.S. business travellers. Reported in The Business Travel Magazine, September 25, 2024: “Survey highlights mental health risks of corporate travel.”

5.          Hoang, P., King, J. A., Moore, S., Moore, K., Reich, K., Sidhu, H., Tan, C. V., Whaley, C., & McMillan, J. (2022). Interventions associated with reduced loneliness and social isolation in older adults: A systematic review and meta-analysis. JAMA Network Open, 5(10), e2236676.

6.          Statistics Canada. Self-reported loneliness among recent immigrants, long-term immigrants, and Canadian-born individuals. 2018 General Social Survey.

7.          City of Toronto, City Planning. (2022, July 19). 2021 Census: Families, households, marital status and income [Backgrounder].

8.          Canadian Institute for Social Prescribing. socialprescribing.ca

9.          Meet n Greet Worldwide. meetngreetww.com/about