Alice Han is not used to being asked if she is a sex worker.

But that's what she said happened when she tried to check in to a motel room in regional New South Wales after getting a flat tyre.

"Are you a working girl? Is that how you can afford the room?" she said she was asked.

Alice Han is Korean-Canadian. At first, she did not understand the implication.

After a few more questions back and forth, the man asked her if she was "planning to work out of the room".

The penny dropped.

"Do you mean prostitution?" she asked him, stunned.

"I'm a doctor. I've come from being an instructor at Harvard Medical School, and I've moved to Australia to work here. I have ID to prove who I am," she told him.

Dr Han believes what happened to her was a case of racial profiling and is sharing her story to spark a conversation about the issue.

Twice in 12 hours

She said it happened again the next day, when she asked a man in the town for directions while walking to the train station with her suitcase.

Alice Han is a Melbourne obstetrician-gynaecologist. ( ABC News: Danielle Bonica )

He asked: "Are you going to be a working girl in Coffs Harbour?"

"For it to happen twice within 12 hours in the town is evidence of a pattern of demeaning stereotyping and racial profiling," Dr Han said.

She said she was used to racial profiling but in Boston, if you're Asian, you were assumed to be a doctor or professor, but definitely not a sex worker.

The ABC spoke to the motel owner, who denied Dr Han was asked if she was a sex worker.

But she did say that a sex worker, of Asian appearance, had recently worked out of one of her motel rooms, and had been asked to leave.

"We're not working-girl friendly. It's not the girls, it's the clients. We don't know who's coming in," the motel owner said.

Dr Han reported her experience to NSW Police, who told the ABC the incident was not racial profiling because race was never mentioned.

A NSW Police spokeswoman said sex workers working out of motel rooms was a problem and motel owners had a right to ask.

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FIFO sex worker phenomenon may fuel racial profiling

Marie Segrave, an associate professor of criminology at Monash University, has documented how Australian Border Force officers used racial profiling to identify fly-in, fly-out sex workers.

Dr Segrave said officers targeted south Asian women they suspected may be either victims of sex trafficking, or sex workers intending to work illegally in Australia.

"There are women who are mobile workers. They are quite well-off women and fly in and fly out, especially to places like this," she said.

"They use hotels because there's nowhere else. It is the safest option and they make good money.

"When they come into the country, they are profiled. They complain they are being discriminated against because they are sex workers."

Dr Segrave said she had no doubt that Dr Han was racially profiled by the hotel owners because she was an Asian woman.

"Absolutely. If it was me, I don't think they'd be asking me the same question."

Racial profiling could affect many

Former Australian Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane said racist treatment did not always involve explicit mention of race.

"Clearly, some of those who never experience racism themselves may only think something is racist if it involves a Ku Klux Klan lynching party.

Mr Soutphommasane said not all racist treatment was explicit or extreme. ( Tiger Webb / ABC RN )

"Yet racism needn't always involve physical violence. It doesn't always require racist epithets to be thrown around."

Dr Han said racial profiling was an uncomfortable issue but she felt compelled to speak about it in the hope of empowering others.

"I was in a neighbourhood where normal behaviour got me stereotyped in a demeaning way and denied accommodation where I was in desperate need of a place to stay," she said.

She is now working as a doctor at a Melbourne hospital and has been awarded a research fellowship to study the health system's response to refugee and immigrant women experiencing domestic violence.

"I suspect there are many people experiencing similar incidents who do not have their stories heard."

