To be pissed off with hotels always asking if we'd prefer a twin?!

[PunchyMojitos]

Hi,

DW and I go away for the odd night in a hotel. Once every 2 or 3 months I'd say. It's our litte treat and we relish the child free time 🥳 and we get to re connect a bit. Like any other couple...

Anyway, that enjoyment is usually tainted right at the beginning, 9 times out of 10 times, by being asked if we'd prefer a twin room on check in. We're not the stereotypical looking same sex couple I suppose, but still clearly a couple I would say. It's so irritating and actually quite offensive. If we wanted a twin, we'd have booked a twin.

It has even then sometimes led to staff actually asking questions like "so are you guys just friends then?" Or "are you sisters?" We look NOTHING like each other! This last time we were asked, even after we had just declined another twin, if we'd prefer separate bedding! Straight couples just get checked in. Nobody would assume they might actually just be friends or brother and sister and so offer them a twin! They would just give them the key to their room, no questions asked.

I don't think it's usually coming from a place of hate or real homophobia, but this really shouldn't be happening in 2022. We're not that unusual!

Just venting really.

" It is illegal to ask that if they do not ask every couple the same question. "

The whole point is that the hotel does not know who is a couple.

Yes, OK, everything is simple for you, but it's not for everyone else

So it's just me? Literally everyone else is incapable of booking the correct hotel room? Well I will take that as a compliment.

If in doubt ring the hotel, but generally in RL you book, you pay and you get what you booked. Hopefully with none of the nonsense the OP had to put up with.

This has happened to me as well, when checking into a hotel with my wife (not recently as we always now have a family room with our child).

Also asking if we want to split the bill/are we paying together in cafes every single time.

And people asking if we are sisters, nearly every time we go on holiday.

So this sort of thing has happened to us, a lesbian couple, a LOT. I think people who can't imagine what it's like, and say it's paranoid or ridiculous to be upset by it, are imagining how this might feel if it happened to them once. It's true - if it happened once in your life, you'd just move on.

But a frequent reminder that no-one routinely sees you as a couple, or as a family, as you walk through life until you make that fact explicit - that's hard. It's hard to be reminded you're invisible all the time. Try and imagine that - that's why it's annoying.

@Gwenhwyfar, but actually it doesn't matter who's a couple and who isn't. If they've booked a double, they want a double and you double check with EVERY booking in exactly the same way.

@Nenemum

Because in the real world outside of news and social media, gay people are still a minority and rarely noticed unless as you said they look stereotypical.

What you have received is just standard customer service. You can’t expect the hotel industry to assume everyone is a gay couple and work backwards from that with bed arrangements.

What real world is that? You do get that the OP is a real person, right? Despite having the temerity to have stepped temporarily out of the pages of the newspaper, where you seem to think gay people are usually stored.

When we first started travelling abroad all the "double" rooms had twin beds in.

@LesbianonFWR, absolutely this.

@PunchyMojitos it’s easy to bandy that about when you know zero about the stranger you are addressing on an anonymous internet chat board I guess. You can no more assume I have a gay daughter than I can assume you don’t.
I’m not offended by your opinion, this is the place for unadulterated opinions after all.

[quote PunchyMojitos]@Shamoo, but it's "just statistics" so you shouldn't be annoyed

Bizarrely, I have had this almost exact experience! Dr seems to confuse them even more! It's a sort of double discrimination, as they're also making the assumption that someone with the title Dr is automatically a man.[/quote]
It just being statistics, isn't meant to say that you can't find it annoying or hurtful. But a hotel is a business and businesses work best when they cater to the majority. That's just reality. In the vast majority of cases where two women have booked a double room, they would be happier to have a twin and only booked a double because that's all that was available when they booked.

From the hotel's point of view if they are offered a change when they check in, they will be really pleased, have a happier stay and be more likely to return/give good feedback. If they don't want the change, they can refuse it, it's a two sentence exchange. The cost/benefit is very, very clearly in favour of checking if two women would prefer a twin or a double. Most people are straight and even when they are not, they aren't necessarily a couple.

I can see both sides of this. It could be a micro aggression. But it could also be the sensible thing to do, without any prejudicial thinking involved. I've sometimes had to book room type x when I would have preferred y, because that was all that was showing as available. If at check in y had become available then it would be great if someone had checked.

And again @Nenemum, it is not "standard customer service". If it was, everyone would be asked if they wanted a different room to the one they booked, which would be pretty bizarre wouldn't it?!

The same people who don't see the problem probably don't see the problem with casual racism either. Sadly bigoted people don't see the problem as it doesn't affect them.

@LesbianonFWR

This has happened to me as well, when checking into a hotel with my wife (not recently as we always now have a family room with our child).

Also asking if we want to split the bill/are we paying together in cafes every single time.

And people asking if we are sisters, nearly every time we go on holiday.

So this sort of thing has happened to us, a lesbian couple, a LOT. I think people who can't imagine what it's like, and say it's paranoid or ridiculous to be upset by it, are imagining how this might feel if it happened to them once. It's true - if it happened once in your life, you'd just move on.

But a frequent reminder that no-one routinely sees you as a couple, or as a family, as you walk through life until you make that fact explicit - that's hard. It's hard to be reminded you're invisible all the time. Try and imagine that - that's why it's annoying.

What do you mean you are reminded you are invisible? You are upset because you are not recognised as a lesbian couple ? I thought that was the whole point of things - that you lead a life the same as everyone else ? Now you want recognition?

I go out for regular lunches with female friends and they ask do you want to split bill or pay together every single week.

I can see how it would be annoying but saying that, I think most of us these days have learnt to not make assumptions.

As the gay community has gone to great pains to show us all, people who love a same sex partner don't grow a second head or wear a big badge with "I am gay" on it.

Other people may well recognise that a couple are indeed a couple but may be afraid to assume they are correct in case they get it wrong and create offence.

Think we all just have to muddle through social interactions whilst trying to be as respectful of all possibilities as we can.

It's not perfect but what is.

But a frequent reminder that no-one routinely sees you as a couple, or as a family, as you walk through life until you make that fact explicit - that's hard. It's hard to be reminded you're invisible all the time. Try and imagine that - that's why it's annoying.

YY, spot on.

And it's more than just annoying in some situations. I have banged on about this on MN before, but when my DP was in labour, she had a really traumatic, horrible time that was made worse by the fact everyone persistently failed to understand we were a couple. She was in for several days and if I left the ward to go get her food or update her mum on how labour was going, I almost always had a massive struggle to get back in - sometimes they'd just see me pressing the buzzer, clock that I was a woman and it wasn't visiting times, and ignore it. Or say 'it's not visiting time' down the intercom and walk off before I could explain. Same on the postnatal ward, and she was on morphine and absolutely terrified a lot of the time, because she really couldn't understand what was going on and she needed me there.

It's all very well to say 'oh, just politely correct people,' but it's much, much harder than that a lot of the time. And people go to extraordinary lengths to explain how if you'd only done something different, or if you'd just done what they think is obvious, or if you'd just taken a moment to try the simple option ... it'd all have been fine. It is so arrogant, that assumption that you're having this experience because you're just a teeny bit thick and haven't tried the obvious.

@Wanderingowl even better if they can cater to everyone and just confirm the booking details in front of them to allow the guest to correct them if there’s an issue, rather than arbitrarily offering a change which may be unwanted. If they’re saying “we have both doubles and twins available, which would you prefer?” and they’re asking everyone the same question, that’s fine, but unfortunately that doesn’t sound like OP’s experience

@BlusteringBoobies (great name btw) here here!

@Nenemum, I can only go on what you post. I am not calling you homophobic as a person, but your post sounded very much so.

What do you mean you are reminded you are invisible? You are upset because you are not recognised as a lesbian couple ? I thought that was the whole point of things - that you lead a life the same as everyone else ? Now you want recognition?

If you had a previous conversation with this poster about what she wants and think she's now changing her mind, I don't think this thread is the place for it.

Or was that 'you' an indication you think all gay people are the same, and can't possibly want any form of progress?

@SarahAndQuack

What do you mean you are reminded you are invisible? You are upset because you are not recognised as a lesbian couple ? I thought that was the whole point of things - that you lead a life the same as everyone else ? Now you want recognition?

If you had a previous conversation with this poster about what she wants and think she's now changing her mind, I don't think this thread is the place for it.

Or was that 'you' an indication you think all gay people are the same, and can't possibly want any form of progress?

Why don't you answer the question?

@RampantIvy

When we first started travelling abroad all the "double" rooms had twin beds in.

Exactly. I think that's why the woman I mentioned above travelling for work asked me for a double when what she wanted was a twin. I'm trying to think what the French or Spanish word is for a twin and I can't think of one. I think you just have to say with two beds.

@IamGusFring, which question?

Or do you mean you want me to speak for someone else and answer the question you put to her?

And as I've said, hotels call different types of rooms different things. The last single room I booked had a double bed, the one before had a single bed. Were they double or single rooms?

They really don't. They've given you a bigger room but it would never happen the other way around. What holds more holds less.

A twin has twin beds, a double has a double. You can put a single traveller in a double, a single or a twin. The booking for a single is no way the same.

We're doing some gymnastics here to make this ok!

[quote PunchyMojitos]@Gwenhwyfar, but actually it doesn't matter who's a couple and who isn't. If they've booked a double, they want a double and you double check with EVERY booking in exactly the same way.[/quote]
"If they've booked a double, they want a double"

Well obviously not always. I gave you an example above.

" you double check with EVERY booking in exactly the same way."

But as others have said, statistically two people of the same sex are more likely to want a twin room than two people of the opposite sex so I see why they ask two women if they want a twin (and conversely might ask a man and woman travelling as friends/colleagues whether they want a double).

@IamGusFring can’t decide if you’re being deliberately obtuse…
If a heterosexual couple aren’t repeatedly asked if they wouldn’t prefer a twin room instead, a homosexual couple shouldn’t be either. Assuming they are sisters or friends is making them invisible as a couple, and not treating them the same as ‘everyone else’. If someone can’t entertain the concept that the two women standing in front of them with a booking for a double room might just be together, they probably shouldn’t be working in the hospitality industry…