No boys allowed! Girls-only travel network launches

The sharing economy network – think Uber and Airbnb – have seen phenomenal success in the travel sphere, and now there’s a new player in the market.

Overnight started as a business similar to Airbnb, where users create private, trusted networks to share their homes with others.

Seeking to make travel a more “trusted” experience, you could limit who you opened your home to, or stayed with, by groups, with hosts setting rates that are available exclusively to friends and group members.

And now Overnight has launched a new ‘group’ in this umbrella, known as ‘Girls LOVE Travel’.

Operating on the premise that many women love travel, but are confronted by the prospect of safety, especially when travelling in female only groups or solo, Girls LOVE Travel offers a female-only option for homesharing.

Girls LOVE Travel kicked off recently as a 330,000-strong network of females opening their homes and travelling with no boys allowed.

The idea is that the group is filled only with women, with the intention of reducing the chance of assault when you are staying with strangers, although Airbnb also has the option of staying in entire homes with no hosts present.

With Girls LOVE Travel, there is still a big range of rooms and hosts to choose from, but it’s a strictly no boys policy.

“Girls LOVE Travel is an international community of over 330k travel-loving women who strive to empower other women to travel with safety & support!” it reads on the website.

“We are a sisterhood and a community to assist you with your travel bucket list, to help find friends to explore the world with and to empower you to discover the globe!”

According to Skift, users can sign into Overnight’s platform with their Facebook profile, then click to join the Girls LOVE Travel group. But Overnight CEO Asher Hunt told the publication that new members are screened before gaining access.

Hunt told Skift that 99 per cent of hosts in the private group offer discounts to members, while many hotels actually charge a premium for those extra safety features that women seek, like double-locked doors.

Hunt said Girls Love Travel founder Haley Woods is consistently “listening to her community.”

“We’re always trying to understand who it is that’s traveling,” Hunt said.

He told Skift this level of personalisation is paramount to its differentiation from the likes of Airbnb, and that he’d like to add more groups to Overnight to stay relevant in a busy market.

In April this year, Airbnb released a 37-page report called “Women Hosts and Airbnb: Building a Global Community.”

But Skift made a valid point that in the report, which talked about the empowerment of female Airbnb hosts, was a lack of information regarding safety.

“People are starting to realise that it’s different when you travel as a woman,” Beth Santos, founder and CEO of Wanderful, an online travel community for more than 15,000 women around the world, told Skift.

“Places where your experience as a woman is very different from others.

“I’m not just talking about women’s focused magazines or what bikini to wear — there are real cultural implications of going to a place by yourself as a woman, like understanding how you will be treated. We need more of that.”

While Airbnb makes a number of big changes, including investing more in business travellers, and launching Trips for in-destination experiences, the safety of women remains a controversial topic to address.

Could this new Overnight girls-only group be the answer? Or are we going too far by segregating travel by gender?

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Email the Travel Weekly team at traveldesk@travelweekly.com.au

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