The Gazette 1991

JU LY/AUGUST

1991

GAZETTE

A hotel code which requires all its customers in the intersts of decency, to wear the basic items of clothing trousers, footwear, shirt/tee shirt and jacket or jersey - which are in a clean and good state of repair, seems hard to fault and would most likely be deemed reasonable. But a dress code that goes beyond this - and many do - and distinguishes between different types of essential clothes such as trousers and permits, say, flannel trousers but not denim or other types of jeans, might not be regarded as being reasonable. This would be because the hotel's entitlement to make such distinctions has to operate in the context of the definition of a hotel contained in s.1 of the 1963 Act, and its use of the phrase "all- comers". The effect of that definition would seem to be that any clothes related ground of refusal must focus on a standard of appearance or dress below what reasonably could be expected of the average "all-comer" for that hotel. This could well prevent a court from accepting that a hotel can link a "cultivated" atmosphere with formal or expensive clothes. It

may be, therefore, be that the hotel must receive all-comers who are wearing trousers, and not just all- comers who are not wearing jeans. The legality of entire hotel dress codes that go still further and require the wearing of non- essential items of clothing, such as ties or certain kinds of jackets, is even more problematic. The fact that these are, generally speaking, not basic items of clothing could make it much more difficult to establish the reasonableness of a dress code based on these items. Testing the Genuineness of Entire Hotel Dress Codes The validity of the assertion by a hotel that its dress code is genuinely linked to a disinterested maintainence of the hotel's ambiance can also be tested by asking whether the code is operated at all times and in a consistent manner throughout the entire hotel, and whether facilities are provided by the hotel to enable the non-complying customer to comply with the code. If a resident appears downstairs in the restaurant for breakfast wearing say, denim jeans, and he is not

asked to wear more formal clothing, then this selective application of the code seems to suggest that the code is not really linked to maintaining the hotel's ambiance. Equally, it would seem to be the sign of a genuine linkage between a dress code and the hotel's standards if the hotel provides facilities for the non- complying customer to comply with the code, say, by hiring a jacket or tie to the customer. The current near-universal absence of such facilities tends to suggest that "Restricted sree dress codes ere much more likely to be ressoneble, and therefore legal, than entire area codes." hotels are content when customers do not comply with their codes and also that they do not particularly wish to enable them to comply. This, again, would imply that hotel codes serve other purposes besides their declared ones. It should also be appreciated that, even if a hotel's code does satisfy these tests, this would not automatically ensure that the code

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