(WSJ) U.S. hotel giant Marriott International Inc. has been ordered by Chinese authorities to temporarily shut its website and mobile app to Chinese residents after circulating an online guest survey that listed Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet and Macau—all claimed by China—as separate countries.
In a statement posted on its official social media account on Thursday evening, the Shanghai office of China's Cyberspace Administration said it demanded that Marriott suspend operation of its Chinese website and the Chinese version of its smartphone app for the next week.
Marriott didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
The suspension could cost Marriott business short term, but the hotelier should be more concerned about its longer-term credibility in China, said Linda Du, founder of a Shanghai-based startup that connects brand-management consultants with global companies.
"This is a reputation and crisis issue," she said.
The controversy began after Marriott circulated the global survey to some members of its rewards club earlier this week, drawing a storm of protests by Chinese consumers on social media. In response, Marriott issued an apology for failing to classify the locations as territories, saying the language from the poll was a mistake and had been pulled.
"We sincerely apologize and thank guests and netizens for their candid feedback," a spokeswoman for the company said in an email earlier Thursday, before the demands by the Chinese agency to shut its website and app. The spokeswoman said at the time that the company had updated both to "ensure the proper country/region classifications."
The Huangpu district of Shanghai—where Marriott's business is registered —said late Wednesday that Marriott violated cyber-security and advertising laws and that it had launched an investigation into the hotel group.
The company was "fully and actively cooperating" with the investigation, the spokeswoman said earlier Thursday.
The Huangpu district also said local representatives of both the Cyberspace Administration of China and the Market Supervision and Management Bureau met earlier this week with Marriott's executives in the country.
The hotel company was told to fix the mistake and "conduct a full examination of its website and apps" to prevent similar content from appearing in the future, authorities said in an online statement.
Marriott also was told to publicly apologize for the incident, authorities added.
"Marriott International has great respect for China's sovereignty and territorial integrity," the spokeswoman said in a separate communication on Wednesday.
Hong Kong and Macau are both part of China, but they are governed under the "one country, two systems" formula, which allows them to maintain their own legal, political and economic systems.
While Tibet has been under China's control for decades, some Tibetans advocate its independence.
Taiwan, now a thriving democracy, split from China in a civil war nearly seven decades ago, but it is still claimed by Beijing as its territory.
Marriott operates about 290 hotels and resorts in the greater China region, which includes locations in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet and Macau. Its first hotel in greater China, the 602-room JW Marriott Hotel Hong Kong, opened in 1989.
Source: Wall Street Journal by Wayne Ma
from China Travel & Tourism News http://ift.tt/1iB6EFm |
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