A Kiwi prostitute records a conversation with Quality Inn Napier where they say it's against their policy for prostitutes to make bookings. Source: Facebook / Lisa Lewis
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.
Speaking to Hawke's Bay Today, Lewis said she was told she wasn't welcome back at the Quality Inn Napier after spending Saturday night there.
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.
"So Quality Inn Napier doesn't accept working girls to stay at their hotel, correct?" Lewis asks.
"That's right. 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.
Lewis said the motel's response was disappointing.
"I think it's discrimination. 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.
"Would a husband and wife be kicked out for having sex?"
Lewis - who streaked into the public limelight at an All Blacks game in 2006 - said she had worked four to five days a week in motels, every week of the year, and encountered no such problems.
Lisa Lewis, pictured here after her streak during the first All-Blacks v Ireland rugby test in Hamilton in 2006, said she was told she wasn't welcome back at a Napier hotel. Photo File
"There's been other hotels I've worked out of and this has never, ever happened. 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."
In June 2003, New Zealand became the first country to decriminalise sex work through the Prostitution Reform Act.
Lewis said she had concerns that, more than one decade later, the sex industry was one of the most discriminated in New Zealand.
"Other girls can't speak up because they are protecting their name and identity. 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.
"I don't want this happening to working girls. This isn't okay," she said.
New Zealand Prostitutes' Collective national co-ordinator Catherine Healy said "to outright discriminate because someone's a known sex worker is extraordinary".
"Unfortunately, there's no protection for sex workers around discrimination on the basis of occupation, calling or vocation. There's anti-discrimination legislation that covers other things quite clearly but not on the basis of occupation."
