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WOMEN

Spain just opened its first ‘women only’ hotel

Spain’s very first hotel designed exclusively for women has opened on the island of Mallorca.

Spain just opened its first ‘women only’ hotel
Spain has its first women only hotel. Photo: Som Dona Hotel

Som Dona Hotel is located in the seaside town of Porto Cristo on the east side of the largest of the Balearic Island and only accepts female guests.

The 39-roomed four-star hotel , decorated with femenine aesthics in mind, offers a pool, spa centre and roof-top bar and aims to offer“a new space for women who are looking to disconnect from the stress of daily life”. 

Cuisine offered is described as locally sourced “flexitarian gastronomy” and the hotel also offers to organise female only excursions and cultural activities on the island.

But although the hotel has stopped short of employing an exclusively female staff because of Spain’s gender discrimination laws it prioritises women.

“One of our objectives is also to give a certain visibility to women doing traditionally masculine jobs,” explained Som Hotels president Joan Enric Capellá to Lonely Planet.

The new hotel is bang on trend with the number of women who choose to travel solo rapidly growing.

In 2018, 33 percent of women respondents from around the world told Booking.com they’d taken a solo trip while in a British Airways survey of 9,000 female travellers, more than half said they had taken a trip alone and almost everyone said they would consider it in the future.

While women holidaying with female friends is more popular than ever.

Double rooms at Som Dona start at €72.50 per night, room only and are open to female guests aged 14 and over.

READ ALSO: Thomas Cook collapse: Which holiday hotspots in Spain will suffer the most?

 

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TRAVEL NEWS

German train strike wave to end following new labour agreement

Germany's Deutsche Bahn rail operator and the GDL train drivers' union have reached a deal in a wage dispute that has caused months of crippling strikes in the country, the union said.

German train strike wave to end following new labour agreement

“The German Train Drivers’ Union (GDL) and Deutsche Bahn have reached a wage agreement,” GDL said in a statement.

Further details will be announced in a press conference on Tuesday, the union said. A spokesman for Deutsche Bahn also confirmed that an agreement had been reached.

Train drivers have walked out six times since November, causing disruption for huge numbers of passengers.

The strikes have often lasted for several days and have also caused disruption to freight traffic, with the most recent walkout in mid-March.

In late January, rail traffic was paralysed for five days on the national network in one of the longest strikes in Deutsche Bahn’s history.

READ ALSO: Why are German train drivers launching more strike action?

Europe’s largest economy has faced industrial action for months as workers and management across multiple sectors wrestle over terms amid high inflation and weak business activity.

The strikes have exacerbated an already gloomy economic picture, with the German economy shrinking 0.3 percent across the whole of last year.

What we know about the new offer so far

Through the new agreement, there will be optional reduction of a work week to 36 hours at the start of 2027, 35.5 hours from 2028 and then 35 hours from 2029. For the last three stages, employees must notify their employer themselves if they wish to take advantage of the reduction steps.

However, they can also opt to work the same or more hours – up to 40 hours per week are possible in under the new “optional model”.

“One thing is clear: if you work more, you get more money,” said Deutsche Bahn spokesperson Martin Seiler. Accordingly, employees will receive 2.7 percent more pay for each additional or unchanged working hour.

According to Deutsche Bahn, other parts of the agreement included a pay increase of 420 per month in two stages, a tax and duty-free inflation adjustment bonus of 2,850 and a term of 26 months.

Growing pressure

Last year’s walkouts cost Deutsche Bahn some 200 million, according to estimates by the operator, which overall recorded a net loss for 2023 of 2.35 billion.

Germany has historically been among the countries in Europe where workers went on strike the least.

But since the end of 2022, the country has seen growing labour unrest, while real wages have fallen by four percent since the start of the war in Ukraine.

German airline Lufthansa is also locked in wage disputes with ground staff and cabin crew.

Several strikes have severely disrupted the group’s business in recent weeks and will weigh on first-quarter results, according to the group’s management.

Airport security staff have also staged several walkouts since January.

Some politicians have called for Germany to put in place rules to restrict critical infrastructure like rail transport from industrial action.

But Chancellor Olaf Scholz has rejected the calls, arguing that “the right to strike is written in the constitution… and that is a democratic right for which unions and workers have fought”.

The strikes have piled growing pressure on the coalition government between Scholz’s Social Democrats, the Greens and the pro-business FDP, which has scored dismally in recent opinion polls.

The far-right AfD has been enjoying a boost in popularity amid the unrest with elections in three key former East German states due to take place later this year.

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