Saudi Arabia opens its first women-only hotel

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 on Wednesday, 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. We even have bell-women. We are women-owned, women-managed and women-run, from our IT engineer to our electrical engineer," Executive Director Lorraine Coutinho said.



The Luthan Hotel & Spa The Luthan Hotel & Spa is owned by a group of 20 Saudi princesses and businesswomen, but it was left to seven princes headed by Sultan bin Salman, a son of Riyadh's powerful governor, to officially inaugurate it on Wednesday evening.

"This meets the Saudi woman's need for a place to stay as she moves around her country," he told a large pack of male journalists who stomped around rooms delicately adorned with incense candles, rose-red fabrics and bas-reliefs of cherubs. The few female journalists who came along liked the hotel but not the fact that men dominated the opening ceremony.