The Pink Inn: Dahab's First All-Female Guesthouse

Just off the coast of Dahab’s Eel Garden, Egypt, there is a simple white house with pink doors. It, naturally, raises questions about the potential identity of its residents - perhaps it’s a fictional character like the Powerpuff Girls or Strawberry Shortcake. Perhaps it’s an old lady who decided to live a freer life after turning 65. Or perhaps it’s a group of girls in their 20s living out the live-with-your-best-friends fantasy. Perhaps it is all three. 

The mysterious pink house is actually known as the Pink Inn, an all-female guesthouse made to allow women to travel freely, safely and make friends in the process. The story of the Pink Inn began when, after being born and raised in the United States, Dasin Gouda flew from New York to Egypt to be with her mother, who had moved back to the country a few years prior. COVID-19 hit, and she had to stay in Egypt, which helped her realise that she wanted to remain in the country. The only question left was where. She moved between Cairo and Alexandria before realising she didn’t want to live in a big city any more. 

In an attempt to explore the less crowded areas of Egyptian terrain, Gouda set her sights on Dahab, and sought out a place to stay where she could be safe and still meet people who could help her get acquainted with the seaside city. “I was used to using AirBnB in the US, but it didn’t work as well here," Gouda tells SceneTraveller. "I felt weird about staying in guesthouses or motels with men. I didn’t know where to go.”

Gouda ended up renting an apartment, and meeting people out on the beach. As she gradually set down new roots in Dahab, she began furnishing AirBnBs for travellers like her younger self on the hunt for places to stay. Then, she decided the Pink Inn was something people needed.

“I noticed that most of my AirBnB guests were women,” Gouda tells us. “So why not build a space where this community of women could meet, interact, and actually make use of each other’s presence?”

Gouda found a one-bedroom house a few minutes from the beach, and renovated it to become the beautiful pink and white six-bedroom (and three-bathroom!) guesthouse it now is. “I wanted it to be a space where people could both get their privacy, and spend time with others if they wanted it to," Gouda explains. "It’s not like a motel, or like an industrial hotel where late-checkout costs you more. It’s more of a home.”

Since its opening, the Pink Inn has created a growing, loving, community of female travellers in Dahab, who continue to remain part of the community even after they leave the guesthouse to settle down in their own apartments in the city. These women stay up together, they eat together, they take beach trips together, all because they want to, not because the Inn necessitates that they become friends. All the Inn does is provide a space where women could travel without worrying about the danger of travelling alone, so they could just enjoy their time.

“I don’t organise tours or anything, because I don’t want anyone to feel pressured to engage in the Pink Inn community," Gouda says. "Everyone is free to come and go as they please; it’s just that most of the time, people want to make these emotional connections. When guests go to the beach together, it’s more organic than it is organised.”

The Pink Inn has been a place where Egyptian women travelled solo for the first time, where global travellers settled, and where women of all nationalities were able to meet in a single space and explore each other’s backgrounds. “I noticed that a lot of Egyptian women don’t get the chance to interact with foreign women, which means they don’t get to learn from and teach others about their cultures. I’ve seen that happen at the Pink Inn, though. We’d have five nationalities sitting at one table drinking coffee in the morning.”

Gouda's current favourite long-term guest is Susanne, an 80-year-old solo traveller who was touring the world, but decided to stop at the Pink Inn. “I’ve been to a lot of places,” Susanne tells SceneTraveller. “But the Pink Inn feels like home. I feel safe here.” Susanne has extended her stay from three months to an indefinite period. 

The existence of the Pink Inn, and hopefully more similar spaces to come, mobilises women. When the concern for safety is removed, or at least drastically reduced, female travellers are given the space to actually explore where they are, and to learn from other travellers in a community that fosters that.