22nd Apr 2008
Etiquette and Society: Inform your hotel in advance that you are single and female
I wonder what the modern hotel would do in response to a letter from a female guest who wished to inform them she would have no male companion.
Ladies Alone In American Hotels
If you have never been in a hotel alone but you are of sufficient years, well behaved and dignified in appearance, you need have no fear as to the treatment you will receive. But you should write to the hotel in advance—whether here or in Europe. In this country you register in the office and are shown to your room, or rooms, by a bell-boy—in some hotels by a bell-boy and a maid….
A lady traveling alone with her maid (or without one), of necessity has her meals alone in her own sitting-room, if she has one. If she goes to the dining-room, she usually takes a book because hotel service seems endless to one used to meals at home and nothing is duller than to sit long alone with nothing to do but look at the tablecloth, which is scarcely diverting, or at other people, which is impolite.
I am not entirely sure why she bothered to separate American and European hotels, as the guidelines are roughly the same: write in advance.
Ladies Traveling Alone In Europe
Europeans can not possibly understand how any lady of social position can be without a maid. A lady traveling alone, therefore, has this trifling handicap to start with. It is a very snobbish opinion, and one who has the temerity to attempt traveling all by herself has undoubtedly the ability to see it through. She need after all merely behave with extreme quietness and dignity and she can go from one end of the world to the other without molestation or even difficulty—especially if she is anything of a linguist.
In going from one place to another, it is wiser to write as long as possible ahead for accommodations—possibly giving the name of the one (if any) who recommended the hotel. But in going far off into Asia or other “difficult” countries, she would better join friends or at least a personally conducted tour, unless she has the mettle of a Burton or a Stanley.
I had already planned this post when I read last week’s post Lone Female Traveller at Skepchick. Take a gander at that as well; the hooker stereotype certainly explains why you might write to the hotel in advance (what prostitute does that?), but Emily Post unfortunately did not provide advice on dealing with the in-room porn choices 
Today’s selection is brought to you from Etiquette (1922). Hurray for Project Gutenberg.
In Europe, it was standard for a long time to contact all hotels by letter. How else would you make a reservation of yore? Yet for some reason, this persisted well into the age of telephony. Remember Basil Fawlty instructing people making reservations by phone to confirm with a letter? That was set in the 1970s!
The truth is that since the First World War, European hotels have been woefully inferior and backward compared to American ones. Confirming reservations by mail, accomodations without private bathrooms, etc.