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.
Enter Oyo, a popular hotel-booking platform. The company, backed by big names in venture capital, 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.
So far, the change applies only to Meerut, a midsize city northeast of New Delhi. The company said the new policy was a response to complaints by civil society groups and was formulated “in line with local social sensibilities.”
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. Nonetheless, more young people are doing it anyway, studies show.
Attitudes about premarital sex vary along class lines, Mr. Majumdar said, with higher-income people viewing it more favorably. “They have more scope of social interactions, more knowledge about birth control mechanisms, more exposure to Western culture,” he said.
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, who asked that her last name not be used, 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.
“Everyone knew we were using Oyo,” Neha said, adding, “So we put that in our wedding invite.”
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.
When the couple says it is more fun with family, the father expresses confusion: “What are you talking about?” The next frame shows the entire family checking into a sparkling Oyo hotel. The father then says, “This is what you’re talking about!”
Pragati K.B. contributed reporting.