Chinese authorities ordered hotels across the country on Friday not to refuse foreign guests, based on the excuse of the hotels' lacking relevant qualifications. The hotels are being guided and supervised to improve their foreign guest reception services following some complaints from netizens from Nigeria, the UK, Pakistan and other countries.
After receiving the complaints about some hotels refusing foreign guests due to "lacking qualifications for receiving foreign guests," or "not knowing how to input information into the systems," especially in small cities, the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), the Ministry of Commerce (MOCFOM), and the National Immigration Administration have carefully studied the situation and come up with a slew of targeted measures.
MOFCOM has guided the China Hotel Association to issue an "initiative on facilitating accommodation services for foreign nationals in China," which aims to strengthen the learning of laws and regulations, improve reception capabilities, and enhance talent training.
This initiative encourages accommodation enterprises to elevate their foreign service standards, and provide more convenience for foreign nationals visiting and residing in China. Additionally, efforts are being made to coordinate with online platforms to offer a series of hotel English courses, providing free training for check-in registration, room booking, and other hotel-related English skills to accommodation operators on the platform. This helps improve the foreign language proficiency of accommodation industry workers to better serve foreign guests.
The MPS is deploying nationwide public security agencies to further optimize the management services for foreign guest accommodation registration, facilitating the registration process for foreign guests and creating a first-class business environment, the government said.
