A FOUR-STAR CORK hotel has been ordered to pay €11,000 to members of a Traveller family after it cancelled a booking to celebrate a Confirmation.

The Workplace Relations Commission found that the family felt “humiliated” after they were “ushered out of the hotel” in Ballincollig, Cork.

Adjudication officer Thomas O’Driscoll said the family were left with the “great disappointment of not being able to celebrate an especially important occasion” as a result.

Margaret O’Sullivan, her sister Theresa O’Sullivan and her partner Joseph O’Donovan took the case against Oriel House Hotel through representation by the Free Legal Advice Centre (Flac).

The complaint of discrimination was made under the Equal Status Acts after the family’s booking for dinner and accommodation to mark her child’s Confirmation was cancelled upon their arrival at Oriel House Hotel.

Meal and accommodation

Margaret O’Sullivan told the WRC that her daughter had her Confirmation on 6 July 2021, and it was decided that they would celebrate by having an evening meal in a hotel as well as accommodation for the night.

She booked four rooms, an evening meal and breakfast for members of her family, including children, by phone at the hotel with the full sum of €600 paid up front.

She described how her children were extremely excited and had dressed up for the day, but she felt “uncomfortable” upon arrival after one staff member had noticed the family.

O’Sullivan said that when she reached the hotel desk, the first response from staff was to say “Sorry, we’re overbooked”, but when the complainant said that they had reservations, the family were told that their rooms were being cleaned.

Overbooking

Shortly after, two managers approached the family in the lobby. They were told that there was an overbooking and that accommodation could not be provided.

Margaret O’Sullivan told the WRC that this deeply upset her children, but alleged that no additional support was given by management, and they were “scurried” out of the lobby in front of other people.

During this conversation, the WRC heard that there was no mention of the meal they had booked, nor of an offer of alternative accommodation, but rather that that it was offered that taxis would be called for them.

Later, in the car park, one hotel manager then “took a wad amounting to €600 euro in cash that he was holding” and gave it to Theresa O’Sullivan for the booking.

In evidence, Margaret O’Sullivan said she believed that she was discriminated against because she was a member of the Traveller community and described how humiliated and hurt she felt in the refusal of the hotel to provide accommodation.

In his decision, adjudication officer O’Driscoll said that the eldest of the family’s children “knew the reason for refusal” by the hotel.

After finding that the family had been subject to unlawful discrimination, the adjudicator stated that he “found it hard to accept that the practice of a four-star hotel would be to corral discommoded guests with children, who were not members of the Traveller community, quickly out of the lobby in front of other people and offer them a substantial wad of notes as a refund in the carpark”.

O’Driscoll rejected the hotel’s assertion that the refusal of service was due to an overbooking on the basis of “inconsistencies” in its evidence and the absence of documentation which supported its explanation.

“…Fundamentally, the manager contradicted her own evidence when she stated that overbooking occurs “one or two days a week” when a record she exhibited showed that the only night the hotel was overbooked was the night the complainant had booked,” O’Driscoll said.

Furthermore, even if there had been an overbooking, I found it hard to accept that the practice of a four-star hotel would be to corral discommoded guests with children, who were not members of the Traveller community, quickly out of the lobby in front of other people and offer them a substantial wad of notes as a refund in the carpark.

The hotel was ordered to pay a total of €11,000 to the complainants who were “gravely affected” by the discriminatory treatment.

FLAC managing solicitor Sinéad Lucey said that FLAC welcomed the decisions in the family’s favour. 

“As well as being extremely important to our clients, these decisions include a number of important clarifications of the provisions of anti-discrimination law. The Adjudication Officer affirmed that cases against hotels concerning ‘accommodation and ancillary services’ should be heard by the WRC and not the District Court,” she said. 

“He also found that providers of goods and services may be taken to have ‘implied knowledge’ that people are members of the Traveller Community on the basis of their “distinct style of dress” – which he described as a “a badge of ethnicity and part of a culture of which the Complainant stated, Travellers proudly uphold”.

The family’s cases were referred to Flac by the Traveller Equality and Justice Project at University College Cork.

FLAC chief executive Eilis Barry said that instances of discrimination such as that experienced by their clients “deprives Travellers of the opportunity to celebrate life’s important events” in the same manner as the wider population.

Barry added that it effectively gives rise to “cultural segregation” of Travellers in society.