When tour guide Brian Nel decided to visit Sutherland this weekend to see the new Salt telescope, he booked at the Karoo Hotel - only to be told "we don't allow gays".
"I was dumbfounded," he said.
Now a national gay organisation is investigating the matter.
Nel, who lives in Bergvliet, said the Sutherland tourism office had faxed him a list of places to stay.
"In the first call - to the Karoo Hotel - I booked a double room, and the woman took the booking and said a room was available."
"I was then horrified to be asked whether I was requesting a room for myself and my wife. After I explained it was for myself and my partner, the question was: 'Oh, are you gay?'
"Although I thought it was none of her business, I said, yes I was, and she said: 'We don't allow gays,' and put down the phone."
Nel decided to persevere. "Now I was on the warpath. I couldn't believe that attitude."
Although accommodation in the town was mostly booked up for the long weekend, he found a guesthouse, the Sutherland Inn, which happened to be run by a gay man.
Although the guesthouse was fully booked, the owner offered to put them up in a flat in his back garden.
"He didn't want us to stay away from Sutherland because of the hotel's bad attitude."
Nel is not going to let the matter rest. "I could not help thinking that such behaviour must surely be illegal, if not downright discrimination."
"My money is the same as anyone else's. I am a tourist guide, and want to see what I would be showing tourists."
He has approached the National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality's Triangle Project, which is investigating.
Nel said he had not experienced this kind of discrimination anywhere else.
The woman who answered the phone at the Karoo Hotel on Thursday, and identified herself only as Annette, said she knew nothing about the incident.
"Nobody here knows anything. I wish they would stop phoning me. I have spoken to everybody, I don't know anything."
When asked to speak to the owner, she said she was in charge as she rented the hotel from the owner. - Staff Reporter