Ok, so please elaborate on how and where you think they should be meeting that would replace the shadchan.
Also, you’ve made this point before about hotel lounges. I don’t think you are very familiar with hotel lounges though, since your description is fortunately not at all accurate. I am very familiar, I have, shall we say, been in quite a number of them, on quite a number of occasions. “
I believe in there being LOTS and lots of singles events that are low or no cost (how that low fee will be accomplished, I don’t know, but first things first). Interesting lecturers (NOT SHIURIM per se), who are willing to give of their time l’shem mitzvah, to discuss interactively with the group, and engender an environment where the young men and women TALK to each other in groups and then individually, would be ideal. There are SOME such groups that meet, but clearly not enough. And there is too much stigma on the notion that it is not tzanua. If it is tzanua for them to talk to each other ON a date, it should surely be tzanua for them to talk in order to want to date.
As to the hotel lounges, well… you’re right, I have absolutely no firsthand knowledge of them. My children did not date that way. But from everything I have heard from my friends’ children, male and female, it is not the best climate in which to be (Even the Marriott). IS there no secular music playing(I thought that was a no-no for the more right-wing among us), no smoking, no non-Jewish people on dates there who are drinking alcoholic beverages and possibly acting even just a little bit in ways that could make frum people feel uncomfortable? Perhaps not, and I am totally, flat-out mistaken. But that is not what I have been told.
I have friends whose kids are Yeshivish and they themselves are not (Shana Bet was a strong influence). THEY feel uncomfortable with their sons and daughters going to hotel lounges. Personally, and weather permitting, I think a date in the park is nice. It’s a public place, they can bring a picnic lunch (he OR she), and certainly get to talk. And if things get a little shy or awkward, there are always the swings…or the duck pond. OK OK, so it’s cold weather now, and most dates are in the evening. I simply cannot believe there is NOWHERE to go other than a hotel lounge. In my day, it was the airport!!!!!