These Rooms Give Young Indian Lovers Rare Privacy. Pay attention to complaints.

Achieving privacy in India can be difficult. Life is a general vortex of relatives, neighbors and friends. Cities are crowded and there are prying eyes everywhere.

Enter Oyo, the popular hotel booking platform. Backed by big names in venture capital, the company has built a popular reputation as a gateway to “love hotels” for unmarried couples. Young lovers who can be allowed to steal secret kisses in budget rooms, in the corners of public parks or shopping malls can indulge their passion behind closed doors.

Now, Oyo is retreating from its image as a haven for hookers. This month, it revised its policy to give some partner hotels the right to refuse rooms to young couples unless they provide proof of marriage.

For now, the change only applies to the medium-sized city of Meerut, northeast of New Delhi. The company said the new policy was in response to complaints from civil society groups and was formulated “according to local social sensitivities”.

Oyo’s move sparked memes and backlash on social media, especially among 20-somethings. For many, it drove home the tension between traditional values ​​and modern ideals that define the lives of millions of young Indians.

Premarital sex is still taboo in this deeply conservative country, where marriages are traditionally arranged by families. It is seen as a malevolent import from the less inhibited West, or an affront to Indian culture that needs to be policed ​​or acknowledged.

Chirodip Majumdar, an associate professor at Rabindra Mahavidyalaya College in the eastern state of West Bengal, says the stigma surrounding premarital sex is about “family honor.” However, studies show that more young people are doing it.

Attitudes towards premarital sex vary along class lines, Mr Majumdar says, with higher-income people viewing it more favorably. “They have more areas of social interaction, more information about birth control mechanisms, more exposure to Western culture,” she said.

Many young Indians have also adopted liberal attitudes toward dating and sexuality that transcend caste, class, and religion, and which still often dictate marriage.

Dating apps like Tinder are as popular as hookups. A 2022 study published in the journal Sexuality & Culture found that 55 percent of young adults in four Indian cities “cohabitate, changing the norm around sexual behavior.”

Neha, a 34-year-old Bengaluru-based consultant, said she rents Oyo rooms twice a week when she meets her husband. Neha, who asked that her last name not be used, recalled the judgmental looks often directed at her by hoteliers, including those who did not use the Oyo platform.

In some hotels, the hosts questioned their marital status before turning them away.

But Oyo became such a central part of their romance that when the couple married in 2017, their animated video wedding invitation included a reference to the hotel platform.

“Everyone knew we used Oyo,” Neha said, adding, “So we included it in our wedding invitation.”

In India, the lack of dedicated places for intimacy has created a market for companies like Oyo.

In the blazing heat of Delhi summer, it is not uncommon to see young lovers secretly kissing in almost empty cinemas or under the arches of abandoned monuments. Bathroom toilets and fitting rooms are all fair game. Cybercafés can be make-up zones.

in the year In 2024, the famous movie “All We Imagine Like Light”, Exploring the intersecting lives of three women in Mumbai, one of the characters finds an empty forest plot to have sex with her lover.

Manforce, which bills itself as India’s best-selling condom brand, ran a series of humorous ads last year featuring couples using private corners of public spaces — a car, a park, a movie theater.

Oyo was founded in 2013 and is backed by investment firms including SoftBank. It expanded to the US in 2019 and last year He bought the Motel 6 chain.

It offers rooms in India for under 500 rupees or $6 a night, no questions asked. The platform has become popular among small hoteliers who sign up with Oyo and must adhere to its standards and use its branding.

One of the first search questions for Oyo on Google is “Can I stay with my girlfriend in Oyo?” While Oyo also caters to solo business travelers and other customers, the company has banked on its image by offering room searches under filters such as “relationship mode.”

And now it haunts even more families.

In an ad that aired last yeara young couple is sitting at the dinner table with the woman’s family. Their marital status is unknown. After she tells her father that they booked a weekend trip with Oyo, he stares at them in horror.

When the couple says it’s more fun with the family, the father expresses confusion: “What are you talking about?” The next shot shows the whole family going to the glitzy Oyo hotel. The father then says, “That’s what you’re talking about!”

Pragati KB contributed to the report.