The raid at Hotel Radisson busting a sex racket has sent shock waves in the entire city. The issue was talk of the town ever since the news came in.
The TLN sought to know hoteliers’ view in this regard and spoke to the president of Nagpur Residential Hotel Association (NRHA) Tejinder Singh Renu.
Below is the reaction of Mr. Renu.
In more than 90% of such cases in Nagpur, hoteliers are not at all involved in sex rackets. In a few cases, we found some employee of the hotel hand in glove with pimps, who guide safe entry of such customers into the property without being getting noticed.
However, to my knowledge, the biggest culprit is the system of online booking of Hotel rooms through plenty of web portals & their apps available, which have become a serious problem for the hoteliers in such cases.
Unfortunately for us, law permits consensual sex if they are adults and unmarried; however there shouldn’t be a commercial transaction between them then. Now how does any hotelier ask them about any such arrangements?
As far as our Hotel Pretax is concerned, we just do not allot any room to a couple if they fail to establish that they are married to each other.
This trend of unmarried couples using hotel rooms to fulfill their needs is growing alarmingly and few hotel booking web portals even flash ‘couple friendly’ tag on hotels that allow such facility in the country.
Nagpur Residential Hotels Association (NRHA) had conducted a seminar on this to create awareness among our members in the past wherein DCP Crime – Ms Deeply Masurkar guided us about the legal position and after the seminar was over, it was unanimously decided that NRHA members will not permit or allow such customers in their hotels. And I am proud to say that we stand by that too.
However at times, such check goes for a toss when two separate rooms are booked by two customers (male & female), they check-in at different time on same day and stay in separate room, but if they enter each other’s room during night, it becomes impossible for hoteliers to monitor such activity. Likewise it becomes difficult for the hoteliers to manage guests who come to meet someone – either a relative or a person known to them – staying in a hotel room. That’s why we at Hotel Pritam don’t allow meeting guest in room if they are male female and request them to sit at the reception lobby.
My clear message to hoteliers is, do not allot rooms to unmarried adult or minor couples unless they produce some document to establish that they are married to each other. Further, they should be more vigilant, on online bookings and their customers.
