Luxury Chinese hotels run by Hilton, Marriott and several other chains apologised for unhygienic practices after a video went viral on the internet showing housekeeping staff using the same sponges to clean cups and sinks, and wiping down bathroom surfaces with guest towels.
The statements came after an 11-minute video was posted on Weibo, a popular social networking site, claiming to show hidden-camera footage of cleaning staff at hotels operated by Shangri-La Asia, Hilton Worldwide Holdings and others. The video has gotten 29 million views and elicited tens of thousands of comments and shares.
An activist blogger who uses the pseudonym "Huazong'' posted the video. He calls the problem long-standing and widespread, and writes that he spent 2,000 nights at 147 hotels over six years.
State broadcaster CCTV aired video of uniformed inspectors at an unidentified hotel flashing their ID cards and holding a drinking glass up to the light to inspect it.
Hidden-camera videos of housekeeping staff behaving badly at Chinese luxury hotels surface on social media every six months or so, according to Shaun Rein, founder of China Market Research Group in Shanghai. Worker shortages and low pay make it hard for hotels to pressure employees to follow the rules, as they can just quit and find jobs elsewhere.
“They don’t get very good workers and people don’t stay very long,” Rein said. “I shudder to think what the three-star hotels are like.”
Bulgari Hotel Shanghai, which is run by Marriott International, apologised in a statement posted on Thursday on Weibo, saying it will investigate and take appropriate action. A similar apology came from The Ritz-Carlton Hotel, which said it would strengthen room-check rules, and work with government to respond.
The video, which was posted on Wednesday, shows a housekeeper at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in Shanghai using a single sponge to clean cups and the sink. The housekeeper then takes the same sponge and cleans the toilet, according to text shown in the video. The hotel chain apologised in a statement posted to Weibo.
At the Bulgari Hotel in Shanghai, a worker is shown reusing a plastic-cup cover fished out of a garbage bin. A worker at a Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Shanghai uses a gel that the video describes as shampoo to clean cups.
The Peninsula hotel in Beijing said on Friday that city food and drug administration officials had conducted an on-site examination of cups the previous day and found them cleaner than standards required. The cups were sent for further tests, the hotel said in a statement on its Weibo account.
"The hotel will still take measures to strengthen the implementation of the standard procedures for room service staff to ensure all aspects meet the established standards of the Peninsula,'' the statement said.
The Shangri-La Hotel in Fuzhou said the actions in the video violate its hygiene standards, while the Park Hyatt in Beijing called it an isolated occurrence.
A statement issued on Thursday by China’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism said “all levels of cultural and tourism authorities should draw inferences and give high priority to the supervision of tourism service quality.”