THE INDEPENDENT: For a country that goes to such great lengths to segregate unrelated men and women, it took Saudi Arabia a long time to hit on the idea of women-only hotels.
The kingdom's first hotel exclusively for females opened yesterday, offering plush lodgings with a full-range of health and beauty facilities for ladies to pamper themselves, away from the accusing eyes of a male-dominated society.
"Inside this physical structure, we are all women," said the Luthan Hotel's executive director Lorraine Coutinho. "We even have bell-women. We are women-owned, women-managed and women-run, from our IT engineer to our electrical engineer.
"This is meeting a very big demand. There are women's hotels all over the world, from Berlin to the United States."
Saudi Arabia is one of the most conservative countries in the world, where women are prevented from meeting male friends in public, driving cars or taking up employment in many jobs. New rules announced in January allow women to stay in standard mixed-gender hotels without a male family member in tow, but bureaucracy and conservative family values mean few have been able to make use of their new-found freedom. Saudi Arabia opens its first women-only hotel >>> By Andrew Hammond in Riyadh | Thursday, 20 March 2008
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