By Phyllis Lee
A video that surfaced on China’s social media platforms showed that international hotels in Beijing are severely lacking in their hygiene standards – despite their five-star ratings.
A self-proclaimed independent team, Lanmei Test, released the video last week, showing its own investigation of five different hotels: Intercontinental, Shangri-La, Hilton, JW Marriott and its subsidiary W Hotel.
Chinese tabloid Global Times reported that the team checked in to the same hotel rooms over two consecutive days at each of the five hotels.
On the first day, the team marked the hotels’ bed linen, bathtubs, toilets and tumblers with invisible stamps, which can only be seen under UV light. When washed with water, these markings will come off easily.
After a short stay, they checked out.
When their other team members checked into the same rooms the next day, the stamps were still there. This means that nobody had changed the bedding or cleaned the bathtubs and toilet seats.
This video blew up on platforms such as Weibo and WeChat, with netizens expressing their anger and disgust at the lack of hygiene management in expensive hotels.
According to China Daily, Beijing’s health authorities launched a citywide inspection of all its five-star hotels last Tuesday (Sept 5).