Room for More
OYO, THE HOSPITALITY platform, tweaked a policy for Meerut that shut the doors of its hotels in the city to unmarried couples. This, the company said in a statement, was at the behest of the hotel owners associated with them. Can such a demand be driven by commercial considerations? Probably not. The number of guests who book should outweigh the number who won't just because there are unmarried couples in other rooms. Unless the hotel is being used for prostitution, how would any guest know whether a couple is unmarried or not? If they are teenagers that might be possible but it is a problem easily solved by asking for identity cards and setting an age limit. Even the hotel will not know if a couple is married unless it proactively asks for proof. It requires effort to enforce such a policy. Oyo says it might extend this policy to other cities, which means it is probably waiting to see the response in Meerut. Hopefully, it should be punitive enough money-wise to not become a vehicle for moral policing. A company must be in the business of making profits responsibly and ostracising categories of people doing no harm to others is not the optimal way to do it.
What can underpin such action except for the idea that sex should only be between husband and wife and a good society must coerce people into it? India is a nation of young people and not many among them will sympathise with this proposition. The times are not changing, they already did years ago but the world is governed by the old. They make the rules and cannot comprehend that the environment is very different from when they were young. What they haven't managed to do is provide a world where the young have enough space of their own for sex, instead of turning to hotels. It's their failure that has led to this phenomenon but to accept it is to recognise their own role in it.