Lady LUX

Looking to lure female visitors to Saudi Arabia, Four Seasons Hotel Riyadh has launched the first-ever customized traveling program for women. The program caters to the special needs of females by offering special check-in options, in-room amenities and a gym exclusively for women, allowing them to feel welcomed and safe, even if traveling alone, reported Luxury Daily.

“The greatest care and thought has been applied to developing this customized program based on anticipating what a women needs and wants on her travels, and taking into consideration practical requirements while still paying attention to details,” Tarek Bekhiet, director of marketing at Four Seasons Hotel Riyadh at Kingdom Centre, Saudi Arabia, said to Luxury Daily. “This results in relevant and intuitive service that can enhance the businesswoman’s experience at Four Seasons Hotel Riyadh in addition to giving female travelers, particularly businesswomen, a comfortable place of their own.”

Lady travelers can tell the difference from the moment they walk through the hotel’s doors. Females are assigned hotel rooms close to the elevators to allow for privacy. Entering the room, the customer is welcomed with a personal call from a female hotel staff members and an individualized note from the hotel manager.

Inside the rooms, females can enjoy women’s magazines, nutritional snacks, daily fresh flowers and bath and beauty products such as lotions and Dead Sea bath salts. The concierge desk is happy to provide abayas on request. For those who want to work up a sweat, a women’s-only gym offers treadmills, stairclimbers and weights.

“What is unique about the female traveler program is that it is the first program of its kind in Riyadh,” Bekhiet said. “It is designed to meet the unique needs of discerning female travelers from across the world and complements the extensive range of superior services that are globally recognized as standard at Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts.”

Since the beginning of 2011, the hotel has attracted around 2,149 women travelers. With these new strategies, Hotel Riyadh seeks to dramatically up that number, concentrating mainly on women who visit the area on businesses trips. As the only hotel in the area which offers such special services for women, and as the area’s leading luxury hotel, it is likely the new program will draw crowds of women eager to feel safe in a world that may seem foreign.

Due to concern over the safety of the area for women, coupled with cultural disparities, many women are reluctant to choose Saudi Arabia for a vacation. Differences such as the prohibition against women driving and the censure toward women out in public without a male relative may give female travelers pause, yet many women need to visit the country for business reasons. The number of women travelling to the area has dramatically increased in recent years and Hotel Riyadh hopes to take full advantage.

“The main motivation behind the Female Traveler Program is the general [lack] of women traveling on their own to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” Bekhiet said. “We believe that Four Seasons Hotel Riyadh can play a major role in providing all the comfort and safety for them to feel at home.”

Visit www.fourseasons.com/riyadh for more information.

Tagged in: travel, women, women, traveler, female, four seasons, hotel riyadh, saudi arabia,