
CHENNAI: In 2016, the hotel room aggregator OYO Rooms announced that it would offer a couple-friendly mode on its website, enabling unmarried duos to make bookings without worrying about whether they would be turned away at Reception, as has long been a sociocultural norm. The mode would only show hotels that did not have antiquated policies requiring valid documents as marital proof. Now, the company has begun to reverse its progressive stand.
Beginning with the city of Meerut, OYO will now require marital proof at check-in. It is expected that these policy changes will be implemented in more places soon. There is no law that requires such documentation or permits such discrimination. This is just like demanding no-objection letters from the male relatives of women travellers or vigilante groups and building associations killing or throwing out meat-eating residents — just another exercise in citizen-led tyranny in India.
The company statement that discretion is ultimately in hotel operators’ hands doesn’t make sense given that the Relationship Mode that was available for several years vetted establishments ahead of time, ensuring ease for all concerned. Discretion had always remained with hotel operators about whether or not they wanted their properties to be listed through this feature.
Now, discretion has become on-the-spot, even arbitrary, and with the potential to create humiliating experiences or even violent ones. Just as it always had been. There is no telling what hotel operators — or moral brigades patrolling such establishments may do to customers. India has a terrible history of punishing people for perfectly ordinary and consensual relationships, from Valentine’s Day mob harassment on a public level to curtailing the right to choose a partner in many if not most households. OYO has decided to side with oppressive systemic forces through this move.
Perhaps OYO had only sought to capitalise back when it first announced its Relationship Mode. It might have just seemed logical to expand their customer base to, say, local couples looking for hotels they could have some privacy in versus tourists as well as unmarried couples travelling to other destinations.
Other hotel aggregators such as the now-defunct StayUncle which even had a commercial featuring a queer couple, ending with the tagline “couples need a room, not a judgement” were also emerging, or unveiling similar policies. Now, unless serious pressure is being put on this or these companies from higher authorities, there can be no reason other than sheer moralistic hubris in reversing a decision that was not only progressive, but surely profitable too.
In June, OYO started a campaign promoting a family-friendly policy, pushing back against its reputation for use by couples. Even if market research had suggested this, it should have been possible to build a more inclusive reputation without depriving a significant chunk of its own customer base of its services.
These services matter, and should remain accessible. The protection of personal liberties that do not impinge on other people’s rights is one of the benchmarks of an egalitarian and healthy society. Who cares if consenting adults have sex in a hotel, or maybe just play cards in their pyjamas? It’s no one’s business — and bad business sense — to bother about.