A Catholic woman from the Republic of Ireland claims she was refused accommodation in the North due to her religion.
Cliona told RTE Radio 1's Liveline show that she and her partner were travelling to Norther Ireland to celebrate her birthday. The couple booked a place to stay on Airbnb, but Cliona says she was "waiting a while" for the host to accept the reservation.
Cliona was later contacted by the host who asked whether she was Catholic or Protestant. A few hours later their reservation was eventually accepted. But soon after that, the booking was cancelled by the host.
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She told Liveline: "I had researched the areas we were going to as you're obviously a bit more conscious of that, and the area was a bit more Protestant influenced it seemed.
"My boyfriend is Polish so I responded and said that he was Polish Catholic and I'm Irish Catholic. It took a further six to eight hours for him to accept the reservation, and this was the morning of check-in, the Friday.
"We took off early enough because Northern Ireland is a good distance away from us. We stopped on the way to have some coffee and chill out, it was about an hour and a half before we were due to check in.
"I got a notification to say our reservation had been changed, so I clicked onto it and it said he had cancelled the reservation. This was around 12:30pm or 1:00pm and we were due to check in at 3pm. I went and had a look for his phone number as he wasn't replying to my messages, we tried ringing him around four times, and on the fifth he answered and made up an excuse initially.
"He said it had been double booked on Airbnb, which is odd because on the website once the dates are gone, they're gone, especially with private accommodation like that. I asked him then about the refund on the money I'd paid, he was very sharp on the phone and said he'd call back in an hour.
"He rang back he said he'd arrange a full refund through Airbnb and he came out then and said it was cancelled based on my religion, and because I'm from the Republic rather than from Northern Ireland.
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"He said given I was from the Republic and I was Catholic, it would probably be best to cancel the reservation. He apologised. I didn't think much of it, I was just scared we had no accommodation to go to, we had plans in the North, it was my birthday weekend.
"I rang Airbnb to make sure I would get my money back, but we then had to try and book something else during peak season. We were lucky to be able to get something else at the very last minute. The guy who was the host of the Airbnb we stayed at was so nice and said the couple supposed to stay with him had cancelled that morning too - we were just very lucky."
Cliona said after she and her partner were able to settle at their accommodation, they were "shocked" by what happened.
She said: "I text in my family WhatsApp in a light-hearted sense to say we arrived safely but had a panic with the Airbnb and were shocked as we didn't expect something like that to happen, and sad too that there's still a bit of stigma about us going up North.
"After we came home I realised the Twelfth is the big day in the North. We naively booked two days away for my birthday to go hiking there with no second thought about it."
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