Husband’s female colleague’s issue being taken very seriously.

Then it should be a “work day out”. No paid for hotels involved.

A work trip, with paid for overnight stays shouldn’t be a open invitation to bring along a spouse for a night away.

No evidence. I'd guess the email reads far differently than what the OP states.

I’m here for the plot twist where OP’s husband confesses that there was no change of policy. He just told his wife that so he could have a free run of leering at his female colleague.

"I'll be honest partners tagging along on work trips just feels a bit tragic/ controlling/ subservient"

Oh, here we go again... 🙄

The evening is their own time!

How nasty of her especially as she had been invited out to dinner.
way to go lady. You’ve just made yourself the company pariah.
she’d have been much better served speaking to people going on the next work trip and preparing accordingly. I certainly wouldn’t be wanting to hang out with her if she was my colleague since this is how she treats people.

Bringing spouses could also be construed as discriminating against parents, which would be an amusing tribunal.

Over the weekend she has made a complaint suggesting that I and the other colleague’s wife had deliberately tagged along as they believed she would be unprofessional and inappropriate.

How do you know that (1) she, specifically, made this complaint and when and (2) the exact nature of the complaint? I've done frequent business travel for companies that allowed this - even one where the company paid for a partner/friend to come to the job location for the weekend if the employee had been sent on a long trip - and it's never been awkward because everyone had the same chance and the reasons for it were clear. But also, having travelled for business a lot on shorter trips with male colleagues only, I can't imagine having ever said what you claim this woman said. It plays directly into the absolute worst stereotypes that have historically held women back in business, and if said by a professional woman she'd be placing herself in a very bad light and basically sabotaging herself professionally.

If the manager/HR person who spoke to your husband actually TOLD him that this specific coworker made this specific complaint, that is hugely unprofessional! But I'd be strongly suspecting your husband, for some reason, does not have this story right.

My take on this is that companies are generally cracking down on perks that can be perceived negatively, even if they don’t cost the company a penny more.

25 years ago when I had the misfortune to be co-opted onto a management-employee forum perks were very rapidly becoming cash-or-nowt as trying to navigate everyones circumstances became a minefield.

A right? Of course not.

But the sequence of events related by OP is strange. The complaint is so absurd as to be hard to credit . It suggests Chinese whispers.

I thought OP gushing about how friendly the company culture is, while showing no evidence of good will to DH’s new colleague, was a rather stark contradiction.

I think something happened and the colleague was offended. Maybe she overreacted, but I doubt she manufactured the complaint from thin air.

Well, that's shit of her. I used to love spending time with DH in hotels for work. My DH used to work away Monday - Friday so we only ever saw each other weekends, so as soon as I left work to start our family, we used to go and stay with him during the week quite often. We covered all of mine and our child's expenses, the hotel room was the same cost regardless. My DH and I would have been very fucked off with a new starter putting a stop to this. We had so many good memories doing this, otherwise DH would have missed out on a lot of the younger years of starting a family due to his work.

IMO - bringing spouses on work trips is unprofessional. And just weird.

The trips should be about work and bonding with colleagues. Not for peoples partners and spouses to have a little jolly and then go off on their own as couples for a meal. Do that in your own time!

I'll be honest partners tagging along on work trips just feels a bit tragic/ controlling/ subservient.

Obviously different if there in their own capacity.

I quite like my OHs colleagues and their partners, and have done plenty socially. But I can't imagine going on a work trip with him, nor him on mine. Also not what I want to use my AL for!

I’ve never come across a nice hotel having a single room with a single bed. It’s always minimum one bed usually king size or larger. So makes no difference to cost of room if spouse there. If breakfast is billed separately then obviously pay your own but usually isn’t.
Interesting everyone assumes stay at home wife. With wfh it’s easy to work from hotel.

None of my male colleagues have spouses that dont work except for one who's wife's retired.

DH works in a male dominated industry but again all the men have wives that either work or have young DC. I cant picture a situation where so many wives are free to drop their own lives every 4-6 weeks

ScaredOfFlying

It is no matter what reason she gave. Spouses who are not working for the company at all are in the group and it feels that employees without partners are the third wheel on their own work trip!

Maybe everyone else spouses go to much more exciting conferences than mine but I genuinely can't imagine anything worse than going to a fairly average hotel to spend all day by myself, probably having to take a day of annual leave, just to go for dinner with DH in an average pub, and potentially god forbid his work colleagues. I could spend that time in my own house with my own friends nearby. It's not like you can charge a Michelin star meal to the company, DH gets a meal budget that covers a standard main and one drink so a nice meal is going to cost us

It's a free hotel room but not a free train ticket or a free flight, I'm not getting free food so have to pay for all my meals, this is costing money. I honestly don't see this as a great loss. Organise a fun activity with a friend next time with the money you'd usually spend

Yes, I’ve been trying to guess the industry. I work in a male-dominated field (80% male, higher at senior levels) and the vast majority of the men have a spouse who works. Very very few housewives/SAHMs (the one I can think of, there’s a disabled child in the picture). A considerable proportion have a spouse in a similar/adjacent industry, having met them at university or at work in the early part of their career. Reading the OP, I can’t help but think ‘what century is this?’

Except she was invited to eat with her colleague and his wife…

But that is not the reason she gave. The reason she gave (allegedly) was that the wives came along to protect their husbands form unwanted female advances!

Wtaf? Cock block? God forbid those husbands might actually want to <gasp!> have sex with their <gasp!> wives*, in their hotel rooms, if they're staying with them! The idea! 😮

*and vice versa, obviously.

I can't really explain why but the concept of a group of men all bringing their wives along on their business trips, who apparently don't work or have any dependents, just feels a bit old fashioned and uncomfortable?

I guess my question is did anyone tell this women before she went on the business trip thay she could bring a friend/partner along in the evening to keep her company? Did they let her know that the evenings were for her to make plans with? Or did she just find out in that moment that everyone else had someone to socialise with in the evening and had planned date nights and she was going to be sat alone in her room?

It is usual protocol to socialise with colleagues for dinner on business trips, and whilst I would be quite happy if I didn't have to have dinner with 2 50yo men, I'd be royally pissed off I found out that everyone else had bought a friend and no one had told me

I used to have to go away on work trips, sometimes with colleagues I knew well, and by the end of a tiring day like fuck would I spend all evening with them too.
Perhaps a very swift drink after an equally swift dinner then I’d go back to my room to read, watch TV and phone home.
And sometimes I would eat dinner in my room too.
This was never a jolly for me, it was work and at the end of the working day the company had no right whatsoever to tell me how to spend my free time.
Yeah, the lads might like to get bladdered in the bar every evening, putting the drinks on exes (as allowed) but I certainly did not want to. So I didn’t.

But once every 6 months more recently, which what this new rule puts a stop to. OP will not be losing out on a “nice lifestyle”. She just won’t get a free hotel for 1-2 nights every 6 months. Also, I don’t know what industry OP’s husband is in, but I highly doubt they were putting them up in fancy hotels with luxurious spas. Like I say, companies have massively cracked down on these sorts of perks. I work in the US now and luckily companies are less stingy here, but we had colleagues over from the the London office recently for a conference in another city, and all but a couple of hotels were “out of policy” for them, whereas we could choose from almost all the hotels in the city. It reminded me how joyless things had gotten in the UK corporate world (I left in 2024).

I agree with you. Something was lost between HR and MumsNet.