Hyderabad: The social media post of Nupur Saraswat, a spoken word artist, on how a hotel in the city refused accommodation to her because she was a single lady has gone viral exposing the sexism meted out to single women travellers. Speaking to this newspaper, Nupur narrated the ordeal she faced at Deccan Hotel in Erragada. “I reached in the morning and was informed at the reception that since I was a single lady, I wouldn’t get the room and had to leave,” says Nupur, who was here in the course of a global multi-city tour. The accommodation was arranged by programme coordinators using Goibibo, a ticket and hotel rooms booking site.
“I made calls to Goibibo and they immediately ap-ologised and refunded my amount. But since I was new to the city I had now-here else to go,” she recounts. It was then that she decided to take to Facebook to vent her anger against the hotel. “The manager and the receptionist kept saying that it’s the company policy to not give rooms to locals, single women and unmarried couples. They have no explanation as to why such sexist rules exist,” says Nupur. The hotel representatives stuck to their ground despite the controversy.
“Our management has ordered this policy because the area is unsafe. We don’t want to risk it as police checks for illegal activities and if single women have men over, it is a difficult situation for us to handle,” said P. Ganesh, the hotel manager.
He says that ever since they tied up with Goibibo they have had to regularly turn down unmarried couples and single wo-men, who end up booking without reading a small disclaimer placed at the end of the booking web page. “When we get reservations from GoIbibo, we are not informed if the booking is for male or female,” asks Ganesh. Nupur lashed at Goibibo for the confusion in her FB post, “Ask them why they ask us our genders? What is the purpose if not to avoid this?” Goibibo maintained that the fault was on the part of the hotel to hold such policies, though they said they would go through their data and eliminate hotels that had such policies without rationale.
All for the safety of women, say hotels
Gender bias and sexism came upfront when Tel-angana state hotel association president Venkat Reddy supported Deccan Hotel’s stand about not giving accommodation to Nupur Saraswat. “The small hotels have such policies to help avoid women from getting into trouble,” he said. The manager of the hotel had also said that the local police authorities grow suspicious of single women in hotels, suspecting sexual trafficking, etc. Activists in the city have criticised the move.
“What is so wrong with single women that’s not wrong with single men?” asked Jasveen Jairath, a rights activist. She also said that it was criminal of the hotel management and Goibibo staff to leave an NRI woman stranded on the streets, with no regard for her safety and by merely washing their hands off with a refund. Nupur points out the same hypocrisy of ‘safety’ in her post. “I am not ready to live in the fear of my safety anymore. I am not ready to have an entire system push me around until I “find a man to travel with”. But frequent solo travelers and performance artists say that sexism is there in everything. “Depending on an organiser for accommodation is risky. I usually take accommodation wi-th people’s recommendation or go for youth hostels,” says Amritha Law-rence a stand-up comedian in the city.
