Once every six weeks or so, Sara Meade goes abroad on business. Working for a big financial institution, with clients throughout the world, the 32year-old accepts that time spent away from home and her fiance is an inevitable inconvenience of the job.
In the past five years, the travel industry has reported a significant growth in the number of women making business trips alone. In Ireland, leading hotels say they have many more female guests visiting on business than they used to have.
Yet, as Sara admits, the glamour of having a job that takes you abroad soon wears off. "It was fine to begin with, but then one hotel room begins to look like another and it is actually quite depressing. Staying alone in a hotel can make you feel self-conscious."
Like many women who travel alone, Sara finds that some hotels treat her differently from their male guests. She finds it uncomfortable to relax in a hotel bar at the end of a day's meetings, because people either assume she is waiting for someone or wants to be picked up.
Eating in a hotel restaurant can be just as daunting. Not wanting to attract male attention, many women confess to going into a restaurant armed with a bundle of paperwork, hoping that their engrossed busy-ness will ward off any advances.
As one of the world's financial capitals, the Swiss city of Zurich attracts more than its fair share of business travellers. Aware that there is a growing demand from female executives for a different type of service, a new not-for-profit hotel has recently opened in the city.
Lady's First hotel takes only female guests - in fact, men can go no further than the reception area. Run entirely by a female staff, this 28-room establishment is trying to plug a perceived gap in the market.
Yael Schneider, the hotel's manager, says: "We hope to provide business women with an alternative to a regular hotel. We are not making some kind of feminist statement that women want to be kept apart from men. It's just that, in our personal experience, many places fail to cater to the needs of women travelling alone."
The hotel's female-orientated facilities include a menu of lowfat food and mini-bar snacks of Asian rice cakes and sugar free biscuits, rather than the usual array of chocolate and peanuts. Free access to a so-called "Wellness Centre", where saunas, massages, a Turkish bath and a light therapy room are on offer. Bathrobes and slippers are supplied in all rooms, and bathrooms are better-lit than would be normal in an equivalent three-star hotel. The wardrobes are also especially designed for dresses and jackets.
"We are trying to provide decent facilities for women travelling on a reasonable budget," explains Schneider. "In this hotel, women don't have to opt for room service just because they can't face sitting alone in the restaurant."
Financed by a group of Zurich business women - and some men - the £120 sterling-a-night Lady's First hotel is being monitored by those in the travel industry.
Christine Page, chair of the Association of Women Travel Executives, says: "I shall be keeping a close eye on the success of the Zurich hotel. There are certainly improvements that need to be made within the industry in catering for the demands of female executives travelling alone. For example, hotels often have hair driers with short extension cables that don't stretch to the mirror. And there is also a security issue of women being allocated rooms at the end of a long, dark corridor."
For Richard Bourke, general manager of Jury's Hotel, Ballsbridge, Dublin, such improvements for women guests are simply a matter of common sense.
"Improving security for female guests who are alone is an obvious thing to do. We also know that they have differing requirements which we do try to address in our service."
With recent refurbishments, the hotel has installed magnifying make-up mirrors in every room, extra toiletries, such as cotton wool buds, and an iron with ironing board, alongside the usual trouser press. The hotel also has a useful food-ordering process. "We found," said Bourke, "that female guests tended to dine alone in their rooms because they didn't like hanging around in restaurants waiting for the food they had ordered to turn up.
"In order to save time and make eating alone seem less problematic, we have introduced a system where guests can order from the main menu while remaining in their room. By the time they go to the restaurant, their food is ready, so they've got no unnecessary sitting around to do."
Bourke concedes that, as client's demands change, his group will adapt, although it has no plans for anything like Zurich's female-only establishment.
At the Irish Hotels Federation, a spokeswoman expresses some surprise at the Swiss experiment. "We don't feel there's a need for better facilities for women travellers in Ireland," she says. "There isn't a huge demand for it, and what's already available meets their requirements."
John Brown, at Bord Failte, agrees. "The best hotels in Ireland already think about the comfort of their female guests. Rather than just having a bar area, they often have a cocktail lounge in the lobby with comfy sofas and discreet alcoves. These places have waiter service, so a woman doesn't have to feel intimidated by going up to a bar just because she wants a drink. Personally, I can't see the difference between men and women travelling on business."
Catching on to the demands of this growing market, Dublin's Conrad International - a subsidiary of the Hilton Hotels Corporation - recently announced its intention to improve facilities for its female guests. With some fanfare, it launched the provision of a round-the-clock airport transfer; an express laundry service; hairdresser and a lobby lounge with "tastefully feminine light". There is a new policy of giving women a room near the lift, rather than at the end of the corridor, and one without an interconnecting door.
For most people involved in the Irish travel industry, Zurich's women-only hotel is too radical and niche-orientated. Perhaps in the future, the idea of having hotels aimed at particular sections of the population will prove more popular.
