Laura Rowley Money & Happiness

We convened over minty mojitos in an authentic Cuban restaurant in Miami Beach, Fla. -- 24 women in their 30s and 40s sharing a long dining table. Someone did a quick count and figured out we had 63 children between us. By my own estimate, we had easily twice as many pairs of high heels in our luggage.

It was my second official girlfriends' getaway -- a dozen women from New Jersey meeting up with a dozen women from the Midwest, college friends of the trip organizer. (The first trip was with my sisters.)

The three-and-a-half-day vacation involved running on the beach, eating fantastic food, and hanging out by the pool, with the occasional celebrity sighting (including Jeremy Shockey of the New York Giants, who graciously posed for photos).

Group Travel Made Easy

Women-only getaways are a fast-growing trend, industry observers say. A survey of 1,500 women conducted last year by Impulse Research found that half had taken a women-only trip in the last three years, according to Varda Novick, vice president of the Los Angeles-based research firm. Nearly 90 percent of those surveyed said they had another trip in the offing, or would like to take one, Novick found.

Meanwhile, web sites like Groople and I'm in! are making the logistics of group travel easier to manage.

"We've seen an uptick in girlfriend getaways," says Mike Stacy, president of Groople, a four-year-old travel web site for groups that combines traditional search tools with social networking capabilities.

Users tell Groople what kind of group they are (friends, wedding, youth sports), and the site narrows the selections to appropriate lodgings. The trip organizer can then sort picks by amenities and price, and send the selections to group members to vote and comment.

Groople users typically plan their trips two months in advance, travel with 19 people on average, and spend 3.5 days away. The budget: $1,800 a person.

For Women Only

Demographics are feeding the phenomenon, Stacy adds. "If you look at the generation coming up, and the popularity of MySpace and YouTube, it's all about people getting together," says Stacy. "The younger generation has a hard time doing anything without their friends. The other end of the spectrum is retirees who travel with their friends."

Stacy says the most popular girls' getaway destinations are all-inclusive resorts, spas, casinos, and major cities like Miami, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Las Vegas. "We're also starting to see a little uptick in adventure-oriented girlfriend getaways," he adds.

The veteran of the adventure travel business is Susan Eckert, who started running Adventure Women Inc. in 1982. "I had no competition 25 years ago," she says. "Now there are 200 to 300 companies doing trips specifically for women."

This year her company will lead 20 expeditions, from a Bhutan trek in the Himalayas to safaris in Botswana and Zambia to sailing and snorkeling in the British Virgin Islands. Other women-only travel sites include The Women's Travel Club.

For those who seek a happy medium between dodging silverback gorillas and vegetating in a cabana reading chick-lit, alternative themes in girlfriend travel abound, according to Rhonda Hostetler, founder of Girlaway. The former travel software developer for Microsoft offers ideas on culinary weekends, shopping excursions, and crafts retreats on her blog.

Luxury on a Budget

Given the economies of scale, traveling with friends can be a surprisingly affordable venture, Hostetler notes. "One of nice things is you can afford a better experience than if went on vacation with your family because you're splitting the cost," she says. "If you have a group of three to four women, you can pool your resources on discounts -- AAA, corporate discounts, and so on."

Hostetler has been going on getaways with her three sisters for 20 years. On one family trip, one of Hostetler's sisters used her corporate discount at the Ritz-Carlton, Huntington Hotel & Spa in Pasadena, which offers 23 acres of gardens, an Olympic-size swimming pool, and a full-service spa.

The group ended up getting the Ritz for slightly more than the price of a nearby Holiday Inn. Luxury hotels also tend to offer full-service spas and free fitness classes.

In South Beach, we stayed at a five-star hotel with a balcony and a gorgeous ocean view. Four of us shared the room, dropping the price per person to about $120 a night.

The upside of a luxury hotel is the preponderance of freebies -- copies of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal at the concierge desk, and fruit, power bars, coffee, and bottled water in the fitness center. By splitting two private cabanas 24 ways, we had a permanent beachhead by the pool, with snacks included.

Dining out can be tricky with a larger group, since most smaller or high-volume restaurants don't want two-dozen women chatting over dessert for hours. Our trip organizer placed her trust in the hotel concierge, who came up with a memorable mix -- the quiet, traditional Cuban bistro; a stylish seafood grill with live entertainment; and an Asian restaurant featuring traditional kushiyaki-style dishes. (We went our separate ways for breakfast and lunch.)

Packaged Pleasure

The popularity of the girls' getaway trend has prompted some hotels to offer specifically tailored deals (airfare not included). Here are a few examples:

• Through early April, the Teton Mountain Lodge in Jackson Hole, Wyo., is offering its "10-to-1 Gal's Getaway" (referring to the ratio of men to women during the ski season). Travelers can book a five-night stay in a two-story suite with four beds in three separate rooms, a kitchen, and living area.

The package includes four days of lift tickets to Jackson Hole Mountain Resort; a group visit to the lodge's spa for a post-ski massage; and a daily breakfast buffet for $1,010 per person (based on four-person occupancy).

• The Aqua Hotel in Miami Beach offers the $999 "Girls Gone SoBe" package, offering two nights for four women in a suite; champagne, cheeses, chocolate, and a selection of bedtime reading; a morning on mopeds; and a limo service from 10 p.m. to midnight, with VIP passes for "hot" clubs. The "morning after headache basket" includes aspirin served with Kahlua milkshakes.

• The Hotel Solamar in San Diego offers the "Girlfriends Relax and Rejuvenate Package" for $385 a night, including deluxe accommodations; one 40-minute massage per person; two tickets to the San Diego Museum of Art; and a welcome basket of spa products. A two-night minimum is required.

A final tip: Talk to your roommates about their nocturnal habits (snoring, sleepwalking, or needing the television on to fall asleep), and bring earplugs. Eckert of Adventure Women says that on her trips, every time the group switches hotels, they switch roommates. "You're not with the same person all the time unless you want to be," she says, adding, "if we find someone who snores a lot, we try to find another snorer and put them together."