Amid a series of efforts to tempt foreign travellers to visit China, three ministries have vowed to ask all hotels in China not to refuse foreign guests
It’s an inconvenience that many foreigners in China have faced: booking a hotel only to find that the hotel can’t (or won’t) accommodate foreign guests. Usually the reasons given, as the Global Times puts it, are that the hotel “doesn’t have qualifications for receiving foreign guests”, or the staff “don’t know how to input information into the systems”.
The Chinese government seems to have taken note of this, as on 24 May, three ministries – the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), the Ministry of Commerce (MOCFOM), and the National Immigration Administration – released an official reply to online complaints about the issue.
The reply states that the ministries will work together to make targeted efforts to deal with the situation. For example, MOFCOM is already working with the China Hospitality Association on an initiative to make accommodation in China more convenient for foreign visitors, including expanding booking channels, training English-speaking staff, and offering telecommunications and catering services aimed at international audiences.
All guests, Chinese or foreign, must be registered when they check in at a hotel in China. Accommodation registration information for foreigners must be submitted by the hotel to the local public security organs within 24 hours of them arriving at the property. Regardless of the different types of business license required to run certain types of company in China, a refusal to accept foreigners has often just been down to a lack of information or (as is the case in more remote areas) a lack of any sort of valid business license in the first place.
In 2022 American translator Marian Rosenberg, who lives in Hainan, went viral with a WeChat post detailing her experiences travelling around the country during the height of the zero Covid policy, which famously made the situation worse for non Chinese travellers who were regularly arbitrarily turned away in fear.
The move is just the latest in a series of measures aimed at tempting both leisure and business travellers back to China post-Covid, including visa-free entry for a growing list of countries, relaxed requirements for visas on arrival, and easier payment options for foreign visitors.
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