Secrets can be hard to come by in India. Life is a community of family, neighbors and friends. Cities are crowded, and prying eyes are everywhere.

Enter Oyo, the 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 vaulted rooms, young lovers who might otherwise have been left to swindle for frivolous kisses in pubs or shopping malls can express their passions behind closed doors.

Now, Oyo is backing away from its image as a haven for hookups. This month, the agency also changed its rules to give some hotels with dating options the discretion to deny rooms to young couples unless they provide proof of marriage.

For now, the change only affects Meerut, a central city northeast of New Delhi. The company said the new policy responded to complaints from community groups and was made “in accordance with local opinion.”

Oyo’s move inspired memes and backlash on social media, especially among 20-somethings. For many, it fueled the conflict between traditional values ​​and modern ideas that define the lives of millions of young Indians.

Premarital sex is still illegal in this conservative country, where marriages are traditionally arranged by families. It is widely seen as a bad import from the West that is partially banned, and as an affront to Indian culture that must be policed ​​or left unacknowledged.

Discrimination against premarital sex is “marriage honor,” said Chirodip Majumdar, an associate professor at Rabindra Mahavidyalaya, a college in eastern West Bengal. Despite this, many young people are still doing it, research shows.

According to Mr. Majumdar, attitudes towards premarital sex vary according to people’s lifestyles, and those with higher incomes prefer it more. “They have a lot of access to social media, a lot of information about birth control, a lot of exposure to white culture,” he said.

Many young Indians, too, have embraced open attitudes towards dating and sexuality that transcend race, caste and religion, which often still dominate arranged marriages.

Dating apps like Tinder are popular, as are hookups. A study published in 2022 in the journal Sexuality & Culture found that 55 percent of young people in four Indian cities “have had sex, suggesting that attitudes toward sex are beginning to change.”

Neha, a 34-year-old consultant 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 how hoteliers, including those who did not use the Oyo platform, often directed her.

In some hotels, the owners questioned their marriage before kicking them out.

But Oyo became such a big part of their romance that when the couple tied the knot in 2017, their video wedding invitation featured a reference to a hotel tower.

“Everyone knows we’re using Oyo,” Neha said, adding, “So we put that on our wedding invitations.”

Lack of private space in India to partner with has created a market for companies like Oyo.

It is not uncommon to see young lovers secretly kissing in empty cinemas or under the walls of abandoned monuments in Delhi’s summer. Bathrooms and fitting rooms are all good games. Cybercafes can be creative places.

In the 2024 hit movie “All We Imagine as Light,” which explores the intersecting lives of three women in Mumbai, one of whom finds an empty forest to sleep with her boyfriend.

Manforce, which bills itself as India’s best-selling condom, last year aired a series of funny ads in which couples found themselves in secret places – in a car, a park, a movie theater.

Oyo was founded in 2013 and is backed by financial firms, including SoftBank. It expanded to the United States in 2019, and last year bought the Motel 6 chain.

In India, it offers rooms for less than 500 rupees, or less than $6, per night, no questions asked. The platform was popularized by small hoteliers, who by signing up with Oyo had to follow its standards and use its brand.

On Google, one of the first search queries for Oyo is “Can I stay in Oyo with my partner?” Although Oyo also serves individual travelers and other customers, the company has leaned on its image, searching the room under filters like “partnerships”.

Now, however, it is looking for more families.

In products that were released last yearthe young couple is sitting at the table with the woman’s family. Their family is not well known. When he tells his father that he is going on a weekend trip with Oyo, he looks at him, scared.

When the couple says it’s a lot of fun as a family, the father expresses confusion: “What are you talking about?” The next scene shows the whole family checking into the glittering Oyo hotel. Then the man said, “This is what you are talking about!”

Pragati KB contributed reports.