High-profile escort Lisa Lewis has taken to social media to voice her concerns about being rejected from a Napier motel because she's a sex worker. The high-profile escort was travelling from Palmerston North back home to Hamilton when she diverted her journey to Napier to spend the night with a friend. While an intimate encounter, she said she wasn't working and after leaving in the early hours of the morning she phoned the following day to enquire if there were any better rooms for her next stay.
In video recordings documenting her conversation with Quality Inn Napier, Lewis can be heard asking about the motel's policy. Obviously not everyone admits to it so we can't just assume but if we do know we don't take the booking. It's hotel policy," a voice replies. Some of the feedback I've had is people asking what the difference is between a couple going there and having sex and me meeting up with someone.
I'm entitled to do that. Lewis - who streaked into the public limelight at an All Blacks game in - said she had worked four to five days a week in motels, every week of the year, and encountered no such problems.
I'm probably one of New Zealand's longest standing prostitutes but I'm outspoken because I can be, because it's a legal job. Lewis said she had concerns that, more than one decade later, the sex industry was one of the most discriminated in New Zealand. The way I see it is when anything like this happens to me I deal with it because other girls may not be strong to deal with this kind of situation.
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New Zealand Prostitutes' Collective national co-ordinator Catherine Healy said "to outright discriminate because someone's a known sex worker is extraordinary". There's anti-discrimination legislation that covers other things quite clearly but not on the basis of occupation. Hawke's Bay Tourism general manager Annie Dundas said it was the first time she had heard of this type of issue in the region.
