A pair of Irish traveller sisters have revealed they put on posh voices to disguise their accents when booking restaurants to stop from being turned away.
Caitlin Mac, 20, and younger sister Lizzie, 18, from St Albans, have racked up 152,000 followers on TikTok after posting clips sharing an insight into life as an Irish traveller on the platform.
Appearing on This Morning today, the pair, who go by ‘Caravan Queens’ online, revealed they’re often spurned from restaurants who either say they’re fully booked or outright tell them they won’t serve travellers.
They urged the public not to ‘tar all travellers with the same brush’ and insisted they’re individuals in the same way as any other ‘community, race or ethnicity’.
Social media stars the Caravan Queens revealed on This Morning today they put on posh voices to disguise their Irish traveller accents while booking restaurants
Caitlin Mac, 20, and younger sister Lizzie, 18, from London, have garnered 152k followers on social media sharing videos about their life as Irish travellers
Lizzie said: ‘If we book a restaurant and then we get there, they’ll say: “We’re fully booked”. That’s the kinder version of saying: “You’re not coming in”, when it’s clearly empty.’
Caitlin added: ‘The less kind version is saying get out, you’re travellers, we’re not serving you you p***y.’
Lizzie says that they’re turned away based on their appearance and accents, with Cat admitting they’ve had to ‘master doing a different accent’ if they ‘don’t want hassle’.
She added: ‘Don’t tar everyone with the same brush. We are all individual people and if you’ve had a bad experience with one person don’t think we’re all the same, because we’re not.
The youngsters known as the Caravan Queens often share videos on TikTok in which they offer glimpses into their fashion, home and lifestyle
The sisters often invite their online followers to send in questions to learn more about the travelling lifestyle
‘In every community, race, ethnicity, we’re all individuals. You wouldn’t do that to a different ethnicity group so it shouldn’t be okay to do that with travellers.’
Last month, it was revealed that holiday park Pontins used a secret blacklist titled ‘undesirable guests’ to ban customers with 40 common Irish surnames in a bid to stop Traveller families booking holidays at its resorts.
‘We went there and they said: “Oh you can’t come in we’re fully booked” and we didn’t think anything of it’, said Lizzie.
‘Then that was released and it made so much sense, Pontins isn’t the only place that do that, loads of holiday homes do that those are just the first that are confirmed.’
The pair use their popular social media channels to dispel myths about the traveller community, including the common misconception that travellers don’t have a permanent residence.
The sisters said that while ‘most people’ within the community marry in their teenage years, they are not married yet
Their educational videos about her lifestyle have have racked up thousands of likes and comments from avid fans
Speaking from their St Albans home, Lizzie said: ‘We’ve been here for nearly ten years and we don’t travel around.
‘Like we go on holiday sometimes, but we don’t pack up everything and leave and most travellers don’t do that anymore, there’s a percentage of travellers who do do travelling – but every traveller I know doesn’t do that.’
In one video on the platform, Caitlin revealed: ‘I feel like one out of 100 traveller women actually have a job and go to work, because they mostly leave it down to the husbands.
‘We don’t really go to work. I know people that have been to work.’
Starting the series, Caitlin explained: ‘We never realised how interested non-travellers are in the travelling community.
Speaking from their St Albans home, Lizzie told hosts Alison Hammond and Dermot O’Leary that they have lived at a permanent residence for nearly ten years
They urged the public not to ‘tar all travellers with the same brush’ and insisted they’re individuals in the same way as any other ‘community, race or ethnicity’
‘If you have any questions about us travellers, we’ll give you as much detail as we can give you.’
She is keen to dispel the idea that Irish travellers marrying at a young age, saying: ‘Everyone assumes all travellers get married at 14 or 15. Some do get married at 14 or 15, maybe not 14, maybe 15. Some get married 18, 19, 20, you can get married at 25.
‘But it’s more common to get married in your teenage years. And it all depends on when you meet them.
‘Some get married two months after they know them, or five years after they know them. You can’t put a time to a person.’
When she does get married, Caitlin will be allowed to go on holiday for the first time without her parents.