Say you and your spouse are traveling to a country where cohabitation by unmarried couples is illegal (like the UAE for example). Presumably you would have your hotel room booked in advance. When you arrive there and you ask for your shared room, do they typically demand proof of a legally recognized union, like a marriage certificate? What happens if you don’t have it? Would sharing a last name on your passports be enough?
Obviously, that’s going to heavily depend on the country in question. No doubt some of the laxer ones will just take your word for it. Another factor is that if you’re obviously a tourist, they may stay out of your business. Nicer hotels may ignore you breaking other rules like drinking alcohol. Kind of how prostitution is technically illegal, but if you’re staying at a nice hotel in Vegas, they aren’t going to report you to the police even if it’s obvious. I suspect if you do cocaine off a mirror, housekeeping/hotel management doesn’t rat you out to the cops either.
Anyways, ask this question on a country specific forum.
I would assume people use the technique that unmarried couples (at least couples not married to each other) in the west used when western hotels would not accept cohabitation. Simply checking under a fake share name. That is where term “Mr & Mrs Smith” came from, it was synonymous with unmarried couples checking in to hotels for a bit nookie. (Can’t actually find a cite as Google only gives me the Brangalina movie or the hotel startup).
Of course in those days hotels were probably less strict about credit cards and ID.
Generally they’ll take your word for it. Hotels want to attract business, not turn it away. In many countries checking in to a hotel involves producing your passport or identity card, so they can see from that if you have the same last name. However there’s a general awareness that many married couples do not have the same last name, and hotels will not assume that the nomenclature conventions of their country will apply to visiting foreigners.
Plus, in many of the countries in question it’s perfectly acceptable for a brother and sister to share a room. Especially so in countries where it would be unusual or frowned upon for a woman to travel alone.
I’m currently living and working (alone; wife is home in the US) in the Middle East, in a country where cohabitation by unmarried couples is illegal. I have been told that, at least in the country I’m in, our American driver’s licenses showing the same last name & address, and our passports showing the same last name, would be satisfactory for any *unofficial *purposes (like the hotel room scenario in the OP). However, if my wife was to join me here long-term, we would need to provide a marriage certificate/license for her to get a residency visa that would be “tied” to my residency visa.
I think once you’re talking about spousal residency visas, pretty much every country, regardless of social conventions or religious rules, will require you to provide concrete proof of marriage.
It will also depend on the hotel: last year I spent a night at one in Germany which had separate buildings for women and men, no exceptions.
Really? having travelled in Germany for business and leisure pretty extensively I’d imagine it as the last place to have any degree of prudishness about these sort of things.
It must have been a very specific and special type of hotel, church-based perhaps?
What? Where? YMCA?
Little family hotel. Muslim owners. Their booking.com page asks for the sex of the guests, which I’d found curious, but when I saw the arrangement I understood it.
I remember one outside Düsseldorf in 2005. Not owned by any religious group as far as I could see. It was men only and actually pretty nice for what was basically dormitories.
ETA: We did not seek it out, just selected the nearest place to stay one night from a guidebook. One traveling companion was German and he said they were not uncommon.
My husband and I were never once asked for proof of marriage when we stayed in hotels in Egypt, despite having different last names. However, we were always traveling with our young son (who was the spitting image of his father) and wearing wedding rings.
Friends of ours had a different experience. They were younger, childless, and had different last names. The husband was Muslim, which was obvious from his name/passport (he’s Moroccan)/silver wedding ring. Although the wife had converted to marry him, there was nothing to suggest she was Muslim; her last name was Hispanic and her looks were miscellaneous Caucasian. They were often asked to provide proof of marriage, so made a habit of carrying a copy of their marriage certificate.
After they had a baby and were traveling as a threesome, they were not challenged anymore.
“Dormitories” Sound like a hostel or YMCA - but this is quite different from a proper Hotel. Hostels are cheap, and if 4 or 6 strangers share a room, it’s better to not mix genders, so one room is for women, another for men, and if a women wants no strange men in her room, she can specifiy it on booking.
The German branch of YMCA however (outside Bavaria) also has “Family rooms” so parents with small children aren’t seperated by sexes, but all stay together.
Yes, hostels being separated by sex either officially or in practice isn’t uncommon, especially if the rooms are four bunks rather than a dozen. I’m not sure how it’s relevant to this question though. (ETA: I know it wasn’t you who originally brought it up).
You shouldn’t be allowed to operate a business like that if you discriminate in that way.
Hostels with open dormitories are a different beast. Hotels with private rooms have no business prying into such matters. If you offer a room for two people then any two people should be able to stay there.
Also, that link isn’t working for me.
I’d draw a clear line between a hotel with individual private rooms and a hostel with open dormitories.
UAE, in the service, during the time frame of Operation Southern Watch, not only did my fiance and I not have reservations, we were both carrying military ID - The desk clerk didn’t even blink - and they very pointedly did NOT ask for Intaglio’s ID.
I’m pretty sure it was an issue of tacit plausible deniability.
Yesh, I suspect the reason they were challenged is because they made a big deal of being married. Most of the times its a trick question, the right answer is to look irritated and say “who carries their marriage license with them”. Cause, except for newlyweds (and often not even then), no one does. Carrying a copy is cause for suspicion.
In what way is it discrimination to seperate genders? It’s very unusual in a Hotel, yes. And I would certainly want it to be shown on the first page before I book, so I can decide to sleep elsewhere if I want to stay in the same room as my husband.
If they don’t tell me before I arrive, I’d probably be angry. If they do tell me, I can decide myself.
I’m mostly surprised that the owners aren’t afraid of repercussions from the public in the current Islam-hating climate.
Well, presumably either the Muslim owners themselves follow a strict Interpretation, or they usually cater to People from countries with strict Interpretation. It could still apply to strict Groups of Christians or Jews, too.
Though it’s not a Muslim Problem - as said, in the 1950s Germany and the US had for “Christian” reasons laws or rules that forbade giving a Hotel room (or renting an apartement) to a non-married couple (because it was helping Adultery if tow unmarried People of different genders were in one room, and that was … immoral, so illegal. Or something. I never understood it).
my mistake, I thought Nava was talking about a hotel that allowed married people in one room but not unmarried.
If all people are gender segregated even in private rooms then I think it is idiotic and regressive but hard to consider it “discrimination”
Of course, if they made a point of not allowing people of the same gender in the same building because they are gay then that would be discriminatory.