Cardiff hotel offers 'safe place' to anyone who feels at risk in city centre
A hotel has offered a 'safe space' for anyone who feels intimidated or at risk in Cardiff city centre.The Angel Hotel posted a message on social media offering the hotel as a 'safe space' for women who feel "intimidated, scared or at risk" in the city centre.The team at the hotel, which stands at the corner of Castle Street and Westgate Street opposite Cardiff Arms Park, posted the message in response to the stories shared online of sexual harassment and intimidation following the disappearance and death of Sarah Everard.The 33-year-old went missing earlier this month while she was on her way home in London and vigils were held online, in people's homes in Wales and around the UK on Saturday in her memory.Kim Pedlar, director of sales at The Angel, said they wanted to reiterate the 'safe place' policy it already had in place.She said: "As a management team we were seeing women and girls coming forward and saying they didn’t feel safe walking to work or home either day or night. And we realised, especially maybe the younger generation, wouldn't think of coming into a hotel and asking to use the phone or wait there."It was just really to reiterate that we are there if anybody needs us. The reason it’s directed at women or girls is because of the news, but of course anybody, male, trans, if they needed it we’d offer any sort of assistance we could. We can call our taxi partners and make sure people can get a taxi from our safe side."
Kim said there were a few instances last summer where people had come in to ask for help. The Angel has been open during the pandemic, apart from during the first lockdown in March 2020, and has housed workers building the temporary Dragon's Heart Hospital at the Principality Stadium as well as NHS staff."For me it was shocking how many people don’t feel safe to walk anywhere which is very sad," said Kim."The last line of the post says ‘everyone’. If someone needs it, whoever they are, they can come in and have a safe space to wait."
The post has reached more than 789,000 people on Facebook but Kim said the best thing has been hearing the stories of past kindness shown by staff.She said: "The amount of comments and messages from people who have experienced kindness from our staff bowled us over - to be seen as that hotel in the community it’s important to us.
"If it helps one person then the post has done its job."