Flight Attendant Current
Other / Unknown
No Specific Anomaly Occurred All Types
Company Policy; Human Factors
I am filing this report in regards to the hotel we were booked at in Sendai; Japan. The senior flight attendant and two other flight attendants plus myself were booked into this hotel. Our pilots were booked in a separate hotel. The hotel is very clearly advertised online as a 'Love Hotel'. You can look on their website or any booking website and read descriptions and reviews stating that is an adults only hotel that is typically rented out by the hour just for sex. I knew before we even got there that it was this kind of hotel; but kept being told there were no other options. Upon arriving; it's set up where you pick out the theme you want on a wall and are given an actual metal key to open your door. You're instructed to leave them your key anytime you leave the hotel. Nothing safe about that at all. Then we go up to the rooms and they all have curtains outside the doors for 'privacy' and changing areas for women. Then you walk inside and there is mood music continuously playing; a karaoke machine; slot machine; a vibrator plugged into the wall next to the bed; porn playing on the TV and a variety of other sexual things. Not sure what the theme of my room was; but it had children's toys and very weird pictures on the wall. I was so horrified and appalled that I even had to step foot in this type of establishment so I immediately left after seeing my room. My room that was also very unsafe because it had no secondary lock. After stepping back out into the hallway; I was approached by a Japanese man trying to get me into his room and offering me money. I got away as quickly as I could; not knowing where to go or what to do. I don't have a working international phone so all I could do was email scheduling to find other accommodations.My response from scheduling was: 'Sorry to hear this. Most hotels in Sendai are running on a high occupancy rate. I will try and see what I can do to move you to another room or hotel'. An hour later after another email was sent we got another response saying that scheduling tried for 10 days to find hotels and weren't able to find anything because of a National holiday and that they still didn't have another hotel for me to move to. This answer was unacceptable. The hotel we were at was no place any one should ever have to step foot in; never mind be expected to sleep in. There are always other options. And they should have been concerned about getting everyone out of the hotel; not just myself. I finally was able to use a phone to call them and tell them that I needed a place to go because I was standing out in the street afraid to go inside. They still didn't know what to do so I did some research online for suitable hotels and found one in 10 minutes. I passed along that information and was told they'd book us there. We then had to find our own transportation because scheduling was unable to coordinate anything with the handler. This was extremely difficult because no one spoke English there and none of us had Japanese currency. We eventually figured it out; but this whole process of getting to a new hotel took hours and hours. We finally arrived at the new hotel [in the middle of the night] with an [early morning] show time.We were all extremely exhausted and shaken up from this experience. I feel as though this situation was not taken seriously at all and I don't understand why hotels are booked without checking into the hotel first. Reviews are easily available online. This was by far the worst hotel I've been booked at; but there have been many other bad ones. I've been booked in motels with broken locks on the door; hotels and motels with other security issues; have had to sleep in a trash bag due to severe uncleanliness. There have been too many bad experiences and it seems that nothing ever changes. This whole experience with this hotel was just degrading (especially being a woman) and I felt so violated and unsafe. I don't want to have to feel like this when I come to work. I really hope something can be done to fix this entire process in the future so no one else has to go through something like this.I feel like there needs to be research done when booking hotels. I'm aware that a lot of times it's left up to the handler to book hotels; but standards are very different in different countries. I feel like there also needs to be some procedure in place if any member of a crew says that they feel unsafe. I had no clue what to do when I was initially told there was no other hotel to go to and I had no one to turn to. I felt helpless. This can easily be avoided by taking a little extra time to look for hotels because I've been at many scary hotels when other hotels have been available in the area in the same price range.
Hotels should be booked as soon as trips are confirmed; not last minute. Crew members FA's and pilots working the same trip should be kept together. Handlers should not be relied on completely; they seem to have special deals with hotels; where time and time again we are told that the hotel they put us in is the only one available. Yet one can go onto any travel site and find a dozen more suitable ones within the same price range and book immediately. When flight crew tells scheduling they feel unsafe; that they are concerned for their wellbeing; crew scheduling should immediately take action and move us. Their primary responsibility should be the safety of crew members. Especially when they are out of the country where they already face the trouble of language barriers. Standards need to be set for crew member hotels; locations should be vetted prior to placing us there. Our job as crew members should be operating the aircraft; not booking rooms and arranging transportation. We found our own hotels; paid for them; and had to arrange our own transportation.
Two flight attendants reported being booked into a sexual oriented hotel for their layover in Japan by crew scheduling. After numerous calls to scheduling the flight attendants are able to find a suitable hotel and move; greatly reducing their rest period.