At the Intersection of Loyalty, Rights, and Legitimate Reasons

Photo by © Jorge Royan / http://www.royan.com.ar

One of the elements I enjoy the most about my career is work-related travel.  I drive for much of my regional travel, and often, the best place to stay is near a freeway exit, simply because I’ll be up and on the road early the next day.  I’ve learned how to concentrate hotel points and optimize the value of prioritizing various brands to defray the cost of personal travel on my vacation time.  I have “status” under several hotel loyalty programs.  Which really only means I’ve been ‘on the clock’ frequently before 6AM.  Ah! The glamours of business travel.

Several years ago, on a late winter trip through a small southern town, I booked an overnight at a preferred loyalty-branded facility.   It wasn’t a location I was familiar with, but it was situated conveniently between where I was coming from and where I planned to be going the next day.  I had pre-booked my stay using a corporate rate, and I arrived at about 4:30 in the afternoon.

It was an older, mid-priced hotel.  The architecture and footprint were unfamiliar, and I speculated that  it had been acquired by the company and rebranded upon purchase.  The property had exterior access doors to the rooms, and hallways and staircases opened directly to the parking lot.  Not the nicest place, but I’d definitely stayed in worse.  I parked under the porte-chochere, and walked inside to check in.  I planned to get my room and then move my vehicle to park close to wherever it was.  The check-in process was standard: I gave my name, I had my credit card and driver’s license handy, and I informed the young woman working at the desk that I had a reservation.

“Ah, yes I see.  We have you right here.  Tell me, are you traveling alone today?”

Assuming she was inquiring about how many keys I needed, I answered, “Yes.”

“Ah, and have you stayed with us before?” she asked, continuing to type in her computer terminal.

“Uh, no.  Not at this location.” I replied.

“I see.  Can I ask you, what brings you to town then?”

This was getting annoyingly chatty.  Give me my room, already!  I’d just driven three hours, and I’d had copious amounts of Diet Coke at lunch.  I was antsy for a restroom.

“Business,” I answered her brusquely.

“Ah, and what is it that you do?”  The question no longer seemed like idle-but-genuine-chit-chat.  It  felt like I was being assessed and scrutinized.  I had been asked similar questions while checking into hotels before, but never in a way that made me feel like my response mattered.  I went on the defensive.

“Excuse me, what?  I’m confused as to why you’re asking me this.”

“Well, I will need to see a business card or something proving that you are who you say you are.”

In hindsight, I wish I would have just left right then and found another hotel.  I had already presented my driver’s license.  Heat was rising up my neck and I felt a rush of adrenaline.  Why was this person  questioning me?  My inner radar was going off; something wasn’t right. I had loyalty status showing numerous prior stays at related properties which presumably she could confirm in her system; I had a drivers license with my photo confirming who I was.  The reservation was made via a corporate travel department.  Why was I getting the third-degree?

“Ma’am, we need to make sure women staying in our hotel are doing so for legitimate reasons.”

Welp, there it was: an answer where the quiet part was spoken aloud.  It was all I could do to not climb across the desk and scream, “Do I look like a hooker, to you?” but I have too much respect and empathy for sex workers to actually do that.  What does being a sex worker look like anyway?  (Pssst:  some of them are men.)  If it looks like a forty-something woman in a in need of a root touch-up who is fighting a losing battle with gravity while wearing sensible shoes, I am guilty.  Me and Mary Magdalene:  there but for the grace of God, go I!  But seriously, give me a key already because I’m about to float!

As it turned out, Marriott International had launched an initiative to combat human trafficking and sex trafficking that year.  They presented their mission at hospitality conventions and seminars and advertised it in their ESG materials.  By 2019, the company proudly announced an  achievement milestone of training 500,000 hotel workers to recognize the signs of human trafficking.  Celebrating the accomplishment, Dr. David Rodriguez, Chief Global Human Resources Officer of Marriott International announced, “As a global hotel company that cares about human rights, we’re proud to be training hotel workers across the Marriott system to spot the signs…combatting modern-day slavery starts with awareness.”

If I had a quarter for every badly implemented idea that began with good intentions to “raise awareness,” I would be less concerned with cultivating hotel loyalty points.  In hindsight, I suggest that Marriott could make more of a contribution to their mission of “combatting modern day slavery” and “caring about human rights”  if they re-assessed their business presence in China or their treatment of Uyghurs instead of scrutinizing adult American women checking into rural hotels.

While the crime of sex or human trafficking is abhorrent, advocates for both sex workers and trafficking victims warn strongly against conflating consensual commercial sex with trafficking.   Arresting people engaging in consensual commercial sex is not the same as combatting sex trafficking.  Critics of awareness-centered campaigns extolling hyper-vigilance and ‘if you see something, say something’ caution that these approaches can lead to the targeting of multi-racial families and women who have the gumption to  travel alone.  Just ask Cindy McCain.  Anti-trafficking efforts relying on operations by law enforcement are largely ineffective and, though championed by media as successful, disproportionately affect already marginalized individuals.  This, in turn, saddles them with criminal records and limits their prospects for housing and alternative employment.

I was not a victim.  Nor am I a sex worker.  I was a female business professional, traveling alone, who needed to pee.  In reviewing the possible warning signs listed in Marriott’s training materials that could have triggered my additional scrutiny, I exhibited minimal luggage (yes, because it was obvious from the architecture that I could not walk to my room from the front desk), and I was anxious about getting access to my room courtesy of free refills during a lunch meeting and a three-hour drive.

It is possible the questions I received had more to do with the location and configuration of the hotel’s interstate exit and external doors than to me personally.  I’m also willing to concede that the young woman working the front desk was just doing her job and simply lacked the skill of finesse.  Good staff is hard to come by.  It still frustrates me:  my male colleagues don’t get questioned like that, and despite having checked into numerous hotels with my husband, we’ve never been asked if we plan on getting jiggy wit’ it.

Hotels are in the bed-renting business.  As shocking as this may be to the fine folks at Marriott:  people have sex in hotels.  Sometimes, those people are women, and sometimes, those women may appear to be single.  Not everyone who uses a bed — for sleep or other bed-associated activities — is a sex worker, and women have a right to travel for business.

Wait, what?  Women have a right to travel for business??  Yes, we do.  The Articles of Confederation explicitly stated that “the people of each State shall have free ingress and regress to and from any other State and shall enjoy therein the privileges of trade and commerce.” This is considered to have been so fundamental to the Framers,  they found it  unnecessary to enumerate it in the Bill of Rights rather believing it to be encompassed by our inalienable rights included in the Declaration of Independence.  However, in 1823, the District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania held in Corfield v. Coryell that citizens have a right to “pass through any State for purposes of trade, agriculture, professional pursuits, or otherwise” and derived its decision from the Privileges and Immunities Clause of Article IV, Section 2 of the Constitution. Finally, the 1966 decision in in U.S. v. Guest, the Supreme Court noted the right to travel “has been firmly established and recognized.”  As a citizen engaged in professional pursuits, I have the right to travel for business.

But what does the right to travel entail?  Is it purely freedom of movement, or do women also have a right to accommodation by hotels?  It’s a good question.  Especially considered in tandem with one’s opinion on a private business’s willingness to bake cakes for gay weddings or enforce mask mandates.  Frankly, having the right to stay at a long-overdue-for-a-remodel interstate hotel with convenient room-side parking is not really that exciting, and I know that the topic of public accommodation will trigger certain proponents of Federalism to rail against government expanse attributed to a broad interpretation of the Commerce Clause.  We can save that debate for another time.  Despite the both the unanimous SCOTUS decision in Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States, and the many criticisms against the decision, federal law does not prohibit discrimination based on sex in public accommodations.  Title II of the 1964 Civil Rights Act addresses public accommodation but only prohibits discrimination on the grounds of race, color, religion or national origin.  In the state that the sad little roadside hotel and I were in, the answer was no.

What should I have done?    Some believe trafficking — SEX TRAFFICKING! — is horrible and must be combatted by any means necessary, even if a few people are minorly inconvenienced.  I was merely asked to produce a business card to prove my legitimacy as a female in the eyes of front desk worker at a hotel.  Business cards that I order by the hundreds and give away like candy.  I am neither a victim of human trafficking nor am I a sex worker.  I’m also proud of and love my job.  What was the big deal?

Was I being discriminated against?  Did the hotel have the right to ask for my card?  Should I have been flummoxed about being asked to present one, or was I overreacting?

Think about these questions.

Then, replace my business card with a Covid-vaccine card.  Are the responses consistent?

I’ve wrestled with conflicted feelings since the advent of debates regarding vaccine passports and requirements to show proof of vaccination.  I’m not talking about the anti-vaccination movement  masquerading behind objections to “Gazpacho”-characterized demands to “Show your papers!”  That is hyperbole aimed at people incapable of understanding nuance.

I’m questioning the reason behind requiring proof of vaccination from customers who are vaccinated, when in the Post-Omicron age, the reality is that both vaccinated and unvaccinated people can transmit the virus.  I carry my children’s and my own vaccination cards in my wallet and thought nothing about preparing to show them during a family outing to see The Nutcracker in early December.  However, in light of new information, I now raise an eyebrow at the continued practice.

Private businesses establishing standards regarding who they will serve is something I support in nearly all cases, but when both vaccinated and unvaccinated people can be contagious, I question the motivation for the requirement.  Adult women should not be required to prove they’re not being trafficked any more than a person should have to prove they’re vaccinated for a virus that anyone can transmit.  Maybe its only possible to reject these scenarios after contemplating them in parallel perspective if, like me,  embarrassment about being unvaccinated for Covid would exceed any possible embarrassment derived from being a sex worker.  That is the analogy after all:  business card is to not a sex worker as vaccination record is to not unvaccinated.

I’m not sure many people could have anticipated intersectionalism between practices used to combat sex trafficking and covid-related vaccine passports. But after reflecting on my hotel experience and the vaccine related brouhaha of the last twelve months, I mind having to prove that I’m not engaging in commercial sex.  I also mind proving that I’ve made what I believe to be a responsible choice.  My position may continue to evolve.  In the meantime, however, the one thing that does give me comfort, is that the single hotel loyalty card in my wallet keeping those vaccine cards company says “Hilton.”