Journalist files police report over hotel’s discriminatory refusal of single-room booking

Alaa Saad, a journalist, told Mada Masr that she filed a police report on Monday against a hotel in Port Said that refused to let her book a single room as a woman — a widespread practice that the government has previously confirmed is illegal.

Saad told Mada Masr that the incident took place earlier in January, and that she tried to report the issue repeatedly to the Tourism Ministry’s hotline but was ignored for weeks.

Saad said she filed the police report as a last resort.

In a post on Facebook on Saturday, Saad explained that she contacted Al-Safwa Utopia Hotel in Port Said to book a single room, but staff informed her that hotel policy does not allow women to book single rooms.

Saad decided to file an official complaint through the Tourism Ministry’s hotline, which was the widely recommended pathway when the issue became a matter of public discussion a few years ago.

Women traveling alone, unaccompanied by their husbands or a male relative, are frequently denied access to make reservations in hotels and hostels across the country.

But the practice sparked a fresh wave of public commentary in 2022, when two lawyers filed a case before the administrative court challenging the legality of the practice, based on the experiences of a group of women under the age of 40 who had faced the same discrimination in hotels across the country.

The court eventually dismissed the case after it transpired that there is no legislation justifying the practice, and the interior and tourism ministries denied they had issued any instructions to that effect; the latter attributing the practice to the policies of some hotels. The ruling fell short, however, of obliging the government to warn hotels against the policy.

In the following year, the bylaws for Law 8/2022 on Hotel and Tourist Establishments were issued. Article 13 obliges tourist establishments to allow Egyptian citizens and foreigners to enter or stay without discrimination on the basis of gender, among other factors.

Lawyer Hani Sameh, one of the lawyers who acquired the 2022 court ruling, stressed to Mada Masr that what happened to Saad was a clear violation of the 2023 bylaws, as well as Article 54 of the Constitution, which affirms the right to equality and criminalizes discrimination.

But Saad said her experience with the hotel indicated that the law is not being enforced.

Her experience with the hotline did not help. The hotline respondents repeatedly rejected her attempts to file the complaint, insisting on defining it as a “request for inquiry” on the hostel’s policies. She was informed that the hotline has the right to decide whether the matter comprises a complaint, and received no further information on the basis of the inquiry.

“At best, it seems like whoever is answering does not know that there is a law against this,” she said.

Saad traveled back to Port Said on Monday to file a police report at the Sharq police station, accusing the hotel of law-breaking and of acting in violation of constitutional protections against gender-based discrimination.

The police were cooperative and neutral in the process, she noted, and a hearing before the Port Said Public Prosecution office is set for Wednesday.

“The point is not a personal vendetta against this hotel, because this will happen in a thousand other hotels,” Saad said.

Instead, Saad said that she hoped speaking publicly would spur the National Council for Women or the Tourism Ministry to take action to ensure the enforcement of anti-discrimination laws at all hotels.

“What will truly make an impact is creating a stir and raising questions like: if there's already a law in place, why isn't it being applied? Why is this practice still happening? What's the penalty? ? If there's no penalty, they can do whatever they want.”

Sameh similarly decried the persistence of discrimination against Egyptian women in tourist establishments despite the lack of legal basis, saying it “harms the reputation of Egyptian tourism and undermines the principle of the rule of law.”

“Egyptian women, who have become judges, prosecutors, deputies and parliamentarians, should not be treated as lacking legal capacity at the door of a hotel,” he stressed.

The lawyer urged any women who face such discrimination at tourist establishments to pursue legal action. He also called for measures against the management of these hotels, whether through prosecution or administrative penalties.