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Privacy can be hard to come by in India. Life is a communal swirl of relatives, neighbors and friends. Cities are crowded, and prying eyes are everywhere.
Oyo, a popular hotel-booking platform, built a hip reputation as a gateway to “love hotels” for unmarried couples. Inside its budget rooms, young lovers who might otherwise be left to steal furtive kisses in the nooks and crannies of public parks or shopping malls could exert their passions behind closed doors.
Now, Oyo is stepping back from its image as a refuge for hookups. This month, it revised its policy guidelines to give some partner hotels the discretion to deny rooms to young couples unless they provide proof of marriage.
Oyo’s move spurred memes and a backlash on social media, especially among 20-somethings. To many, it drove home the tension between traditional values and modern ideals that defines life for millions of young Indians.
Premarital sex is still largely taboo in this deeply conservative country, where marriages are traditionally arranged by families. It is widely viewed as a malign import from the less-inhibited West, and as an affront to Indian culture that is either to be policed or left unacknowledged.
The stigma around sex before marriage is about “family honor,” said Chirodip Majumdar, an associate professor at Rabindra Mahavidyalaya, a college in the eastern state of West Bengal.
Attitudes about premarital sex vary along class lines, Mr. Majumdar said, with higher-income people viewing it more favorably.
Many young Indians, too, have embraced liberal attitudes toward dating and sex that transcend caste, class and religion, which still often dictate arranged marriages.
Dating apps like Tinder are popular, as are hookups. A 2022 study published in the journal Sexuality & Culture found that 55 percent of young adults in four cities in India “engaged in hooking up, indicating that the norm regarding sexual behavior might be shifting.
Neha, a 34-year-old counselor based in Bengaluru, said she and her husband rented Oyo rooms twice a week when they were dating. Neha recalled the judgmental glances that hotel owners, including those that did not use the Oyo platform, often directed her way.
At some hotels, the proprietors questioned their marital status before turning them away.
But Oyo became such a core part of their romance that when the couple got married in 2017, their animated video wedding invitation contained a reference to the hotel platform.
The lack of private spaces in India to engage in intimacy created a market for companies like Oyo.
It is not uncommon to see young lovers exchange stealthy kisses in nearly empty movie theaters or under the archways of abandoned monuments in the blazing heat of a Delhi summer. Bathroom stalls and fitting rooms are all fair game. Cybercafes can be a make-out zone.
In the acclaimed 2024 movie “All We Imagine as Light,” which explores the intersecting lives of three women in Mumbai, one of the characters finds a deserted patch of forest to have sex with her boyfriend.
Manforce, which bills itself as India’s best-selling condom brand, last year featured a series of humorous ads with couples getting it on in private corners of public spaces — a car, a park, a cinema.
Oyo was founded in 2013 and is backed by investment firms, including SoftBank. It expanded to the United States in 2019, and last year it bought the Motel 6 chain.
In India, it offers rooms for as little as 500 rupees, or less than $6, a night, no questions asked. The platform became popular with small-hotel owners, who by signing up with Oyo are required to abide by its standards and use its branding.
On Google, one of the first search questions for Oyo is “Can I stay in Oyo with my girlfriend?” Although Oyo also serves solo business travelers and other customers, the company leaned into its image, offering room searches under filters like “relationship mode.”
Now, however, it is pursuing more families.
In an ad released last year, a young couple sits at the dinner table with the woman’s family. Their marital status is unclear. After she tells her father that they have booked a weekend trip with Oyo, he looks at them, horrified.
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