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[normative_]

Sharing a room with a student is inappropriate. It's really that simple.

[amewa_silk]

I agree normative_.

I also want to address OP's consideration of enduring ten hours travel time with students.  Keep it professional, you have vast knowledge about the field which you can impart to these students.  If at all possible, resist the temptation to strike up friendly, personal conversations just to pass an idle ten hours in a car/bus/other confined space.

[jon_margerumleys]

I'm with those who encourage you to say to the students "I have x budget for your room and board, each of you can have x/2, let me know what arrangements you have made and I'll cover them."  If they want to share a room, fine, if they want to consider it a subsidy of private rooms, fine, if they want to stay at a youth hostel, fine. . . in whatever case, the decision is theirs.  For the record, I've slept on plenty of hotel room floors with three other grad students of mixed gender and it didn't kill any of us.  But it was our decision, not our advisors.

Jon

[seniorscholar]

I'm kind of astonished at all the discomfort here. I've shared rooms with my same-gender PhD students for more than 20 years, and a long car or airplane trip is a wonderful for mentoring (and for sharing professional gossip they are grateful to have). And as a grad student and junior faculty member, I generally shared with a graduate student/junior faculty member first discovered through a conference arranger (and this was back in the days when hotel rooms had one double -- not queen -- bed and the two of us, both single and of the same gender, happily shared). We have giggled about this in recent years when comfortably writing references for each other for things like NEH grants: would the committees involved have given us the grants (in different years) if they knew that history?

[dr_wil_rake]

Student #2 is a female MS student.  She is also nearing graduation.  She is a somewhat weaker student, but OK.  She has never been to a conference.

What would you do?

How good looking is she? That makes a difference on the room sharing scenario IMHO

[dr_wil_rake]

And as a grad student and junior faculty member, I generally shared with a graduate student/junior faculty member first discovered through a conference arranger (and this was back in the days when hotel rooms had one double -- not queen -- bed and the two of us, both single and of the same gender, happily shared).

One of yous slept at the foot of the bed, right?