Sreda, 26. mart 2008. - Objavljeno 11:57 GMT

Prvi hotel za žene u Rijadu

The executive director of the Luthan Hotel and Spa says the response to the idea of a women-only hotel has been overwhelming.

The hotel has twenty-five rooms and offers round the clock services to guests. There's a pool and spa, with yoga and fitness classes, which the hotel hopes will attract women on business trips and well as expatriates from the nearby diplomatic quarter and local women coming for fun.

This is the first spa hotel available to women all the time, pools in other hotels are only open to women on certain fixed days or hours. And in a country where women are required by law to cover themselves in Islamic dress when in public it's a huge bonus that inside the hotel they can move around uncovered as if they were at home. As the manager put it, it's like being anywhere else in the world.

Saudi tourism officials who attended the launch of the hotel have encouraged other women to invest in similar hotels across the Kingdom. Women-only hotels already exist in America, Berlin and the former Yugoslavia. And Britain, for example, has a hotel offering a floor exclusively for women while Tehran and Bombay have women only taxi services.

Frances Harrison, BBC Religious Affairs reporter

has been overwhelming
bio je mnogo veći nego što se očekivalo, kapaciteti su bili puni

round the clock
24 sata dnevno

expatriates
trajni useljenici, ljudi iz drugih zemalja koji su trajno nastanjeni, u ovom slučaju, u Saudijskoj Arabiji

diplomatic quarter
diplomatska četvrt, deo grada u kome su nastanjeni strani zvaničnici

spa hotel
hotel sa salonom za ulepšavanje

required by law
zakon propisuje, zakonska obaveza

a huge bonus
velika prednost

put it
objasnio, razjasnio

who attended the launch
koji su bili na otvaranju

exclusively
isključivo, samo