To stay at conference hotel alone

[norfolkbroads]

In a few weeks I am going to a conference/weekend event related to a hobby of mine. It's just over an hour away from where I live with my parents (I'm early 20s) while I'm saving to move out. The event lasts a couple of days and I had originally planned to drive back and forth each day. However, I have now booked a single room in a hotel near to the conference venue as I got a good deal and not having to travel will enable me to get more from the conference.

AIBU to consider staying there alone? I have friends who will also be attending the conference, so I will be with them during it, but they will not be staying with me at the hotel for the two nights. My parents are still pretty involved in what I'm up to (a slight bone of contention on my part!) but I haven't told them about my plans yet as I am worried they will be anxious about it and try to discourage me. The hotel is in a safe area and has good reviews online.

Staying in a hotel alone with no one to bother you or steal your snacks is the best part of going to a conference.

Yes I have considered the fire angle. I take the view that fire is less likely to be a problem and if there was a fire no one would be coming to get me anyway. Could always be wrong in a particular circumstance but that’s my view.

What a condescending reply to someone who was asking you a perfectly reasonable question

You have thrown a whole lot of supposed ‘standard’ advice at us all which, as many posters have pointed out, is not standard corporate advice in our experience. When someone asks you to back up your claims you start to throw in insults about people being drunk.

I have read your subsequent post about the industry you worked in and fair enough if that was the advice there because of the culture but it’s not a cross industry standard.

All you are doing is putting fear into people when we should be empowering other females to feel like they can go to such events without fear.

Any situation needs your wits about you but your list of do’s and font’s is way over the top

I believe I was being badgered and bullied by the poster who was demanding statistics in an inappropriate way simply because I held a different view. I will not engage with questions asked in such a disrespectful manner. An apology would be nice but I won’t hold my breath.

Empowering other women is of course great, but we need to stay realistic. Wishful thinking is not a strategy.

And if you believe that the goings on I mentioned are only in one industry you are seriously seriously seriously SERIOUSLY deluded. I could go on but will spare everyone.

Jesus wept. It's 2022.

I have to agree with the majority - most of this advice seems OTT.

yes as a single female traveller you need to be sensible.

but I have been travelling alone for twenty years with work and always have a drink in a hotel bar. I always eat alone in restaurants. And I will talk to men at events! I don’t think hotels are any more dangerous than anywhere else? I appreciate they feature in a lot of tv crime dramas - but where is the real work stats to support this view. It’s not advice I have ever seen or been given.

not answering a unexpected knock is reasonable, wedge the door if it makes you feel safe - the rest is OTT if you are travelling in the western world.

yes be sensible but don’t live in unreasonable fear. I have never seen any statistics that support this extreme level of fear and caution and it must be a miserable way to live. It’s just a way to control women - the world is too dangerous don’t go out and enjoy it - stay in the kitchen!

@DontBlameMe79, I don't understand how news reports of assaults in or near random car parks not associated with conferences are evidence supporting the need for any of your advice. The very fact that they are news reports demonstrates that they are unusual. - if they were commonplace newspapers wouldn't bother to report them. That's why the request for statistics was justified.

I've never come across standard advice to women at conferences to hide in their hotel rooms with wedges under the door, I've never known anyone who followed such advice, and I've never known anyone who has been attacked as a result. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but then attacks happen everywhere and in all sorts of circumstances. I'm all for sensible precautions, but hiding away is way over the top.

So the other poster was drunk and I am deluded. Any other insults you want to throw at posters who disagree with you?

While I do believe your initial comment was coming from a good place, there have been many others who have had the opposite experience and don’t feel they need to restrict their life in that way.

Yes I think what I said was that if you believed the goings on I referenced are restricted to one industry you are deluded. You could be other things of course than deluded, like uninformed but pretending to be informed - I’m not quite sure what to call that…it’s a Walter Mitty type of thing I suppose, living in an unrealistic fantasy. Only you know which category you are in so I can’t really help you further with classifying it.

It’s a perfectly normal thing to do, go for it

Probably the oddest post in this thread. There are news reports because the attacks are horrific. They are also thankfully rare. If they were common the news reports would not stop, something more tangible would be done to stop the attacks. Wouldn’t that be a nice development.

As it is posters are dismissing these attacks because they are rare, but that’s not going to be much consolation if they happen to you.

Not going to the restaurant or having a drink is OTT,. However, having your wits about you at conferences is sensible. A depressing number of women (especially younger women) have been sexually harassed or assaulted at academic conferences. I don't know whether that is something specific to our sector though.

As it is posters are dismissing these attacks because they are rare, but that’s not going to be much consolation if they happen to you.

Most people aren't prepared to limit their lives based on a "what if", though.

I don't want to live such a limited life and get to the point where I'm too scared to sit in a restaurant or walk across a field alone.

I work for a big company that has a corporate contract for our hotel stays and the only advice given is to use the correct website to book the hotel and you can spend X amount on food and X amount on alcoholic drinks. There is no mention on advising on safety aspects at all.

Having stayed away on my own I did manage to survive the on-site restaurant and made it safely back to my room. I’m not sure why there is more risk in doing this than there is in getting into your room from the check in desk… unless you are roaring drunk?

I do always lock the door with their gadgets but only because DH who often stays away with work, has twice been allocated rooms that were already in use. On one occasion he walked into the room to find a naked guy having a wank 🫣
For the record, DH also locks his door on his own and we do when travelling for leisure.

@DontBlameMe79 clearly you haven’t “considered the fire angle” because that is simply not the only potentially lethal thing that could happen. Unless you plan on also carrying breathing apparatus and frankly I wouldn’t be surprised then YABVU to keep defending such a dangerous practice.

You claim to be mitigating risk but only one kind of risk

@Dashel of course lock the door. Wedge it shut while you sleep? No!

@DontBlameMe79 it's not 'standard" advice in the UK corporate world. I've certainly never come across it and I work in a trade body of thousand of organisational members.

And your personal advice to block fire escapes is appallingly dangerous

You'll be absolutely fine. I have to travel alone for work to all kinds of places - Italy, Spain, France, Jamaica etc and a different hotel most weekends in the UK - and there's never been a problem. I even eat in the restaurants alone.

So sad to see this poster trying to instil fear in the OP by doubling down on their OTT advice. I would suggest a bit of reading about risk assessment and management.

OP if you are still reading, one person has dominated and derailed this thread with her very strong opinions and advice.

we have no way of knowing if she is a genuine poster or not.

but I hope you see the majority of people disagree.

please stay in the hotel and don’t live your life in fear.

So, still no stats, then? Just your own anecdotes and a couple of isolated incidents that you hastily Googled, which - to quote you - are meaningless from a statistical perspective?

As expected.

Of course you can stay at a hotel on your own

If you don't want to eat in the hotel, pick up some sandwiches or snacks to eat in your room. Some hotels provide room service food too.

Take a book, ipad, mobile phone & a charger with a long lead

As for men at conferences, I think you must have led a sheltered life, not attended many of them or your comment was a joke. Men I have worked with viewed them as party time away from their significant other. What happens at the conference stays at the conference and all that, plus they are often in a group so they egg each other on. I’m in a male dominated industry and I’m aware of strip club visits (this is a given), escorts joining them in hotels often for group sex, blow jobs in hotel toilets, drunken encounters between colleagues or with people they just met, drug use, vomiting wherever. It goes on…I’m even aware of a delightful pair who booked three escorts each one after the other in adjoining rooms as some kind of sick dare to give them bragging rights.

Bizarre. I am a conference organiser, in a male dominated industry (mining) and have been for 23 years. I have never seen this type of behaviour at a conference before. Please note that I am not denying your experience, just sharing my own.

Which industry did you work in, if you don't mind sharing? I'd definitely like to avoid it as the men sound fucking awful!

They might consider my "taking off" and staying in a hotel to go to a conference on my own a bit wild, particularly as I won't have given them much time to get used to the idea in advance of my plans

OP, I don't think your parents' attitude towards you - a grown woman in your 20s - is at all healthy. It's really not normal for parents to fret about someone in their 20s doing things like staying in a hotel alone.

Lol. I regularly travel with work. Not once has my employer sat everyone down and told the women they're not allowed to eat in the hotel restaurant.

Because that would be patently ridiculous and discriminatory.