Coupled with permission for women to drive [posted below], gaining permission to check into a hotel without a guardian is another signal advance for Saudi women. Women, particularly businesswomen, have complained that their ability to do their work is limited by their inability to safely stay in a distant city. Unless they are traveling with a guardian (not always feasible) or have family in a given city, they’re essentially stuck. Now they can check into a hotel using their own ID cards, with more government regulation, as yet unannounced, sure to follow.

With Reuters’ Andrew Hammond doing this reporting, I’m confident that he’s got the facts right.

Saudi Arabia eases rules for women in hotels
Andrew Hammond

RIYADH (Reuters) – Saudi authorities, breaking with religious codes that require women to be accompanied by a male guardian, have decided to allow women to stay in hotels on their own, a newspaper reported on Monday.

A royal decree allowed the Ministry of Commerce and Industry to lay down new regulations simply requiring women to show personal identification including a photograph, which hotel managers must register with local police, al-Watan said.

Tribal custom and hardline religious strictures limit women’s movement in the conservative Islamic state, the only country in the world where women are forbidden from driving.

Saudi women can face harassment from the religious police if they are not accompanied in public areas by a male relative who acts as her “guardian.” The rules are less strictly enforced for foreigners and in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia’s most liberal city.

The paper said the rules, set out in last month’s decree, were worked out in coordination with the Ministry of the Interior and the religious police organization, two bodies who rights activists say stand in the way of improved women’s rights in Saudi Arabia.
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