Then after a Marriott employee working the Marriott Rewards twitter account ‘liked’ a tweet by Friends of Tibet the company was letting everyone know that employee was being fired rather than the usual corporate response of not commenting on personnel matters.
Now Marriott is proactively removing banned books out of fear of offending Chinese bureaucrats.
As recently as Sunday, hollow, cardboard copies of “Bloody Harvest: the Killing of Falun Gong for Their Organs” appeared on bookshelves in the lounge of the Element by Westin hotel in Chongli, a ski area about three hours northwest of the Chinese capital that is being developed as an Olympics site. China branded the Falun Gong an “evil cult” in 1999 after about 10,000 followers surrounded the Communist Party headquarters in Beijing in a silent protest.
After being informed about the titles’ presence by Bloomberg News, the hotel pulled them down and alerted the local Public Security Bureau, Element Chongli said in an emailed statement Tuesday. “As we are assisting the PSB with their enquiries we will not be commenting further,” the hotel said via a Marriott representative.
If you do business in China, you follow Chinese rules. And China’s strong reaction in forcing their website to go down for a week – no doubt causing their hotels significant lost business – taught Marriott a lesson that they needed to collaborate with the regime or face consequences.
In other news there is no truth to the rumor that Marshal Pétain is next in line to replace Arne Sorenson as CEO of Marriott.
Will the be removing the Book of Mormon from every room?
Immovable object meets unstoppable force… will be fun to see if it hits the radar.
@Andy: Obviously you know very little about China. Falun Gong is nothing close to being an unstoppable force / immovable object. I’m sure the local Public Security Bureau is looking at the book placement seriously. Police investigations in China are rarely covered in the press and can be far more successful than you can imagine. Falun Gong has long been decimated on the Mainland and its chances for revival are precisely zilch. Whether it’s right or wrong is immaterial.
Marriott knows exactly what they need to do if they don’t want to be forced overnight into a Chinese bankruptcy. Everybody knows the rules. The only choice is either like them or lump them.
@Andy: By the way, there is no Book of Mormon in Marriott China rooms.
Mainland Chinese travelers, both leisure and business book using OTA, not corporate sites.
Sad to see that the Fahrenheit 541 Chinese goon squad has western corporations in the midst of self-censoring.
Nice Vichy reference.
Jc – I never said a thing about Falun Gong. Don’t know about it/them, don’t care either.
I was talking about the Marriott/LDS connection, and you simply read into it something that wasn’t there.
But thanks for the data point re BoM in China Marriotts. I was truly curious, since every Marriott I’ve ever visited has had the BoM in the nightstand (well, I stayed at a Marriott in Beijing 15 years ago but didn’t check, so not sure if it had one or not).
Marriott hotels were taken down in some major ota and dianping(yelp of China) as well.
A cruel lesson: When in Rome.
Unhappy? Try to eat pork in Saudi Arabia next time~
Of course there is no Book of Mormon in Marriott hotels in China. That’s why they offer alcohol in their hotels, and offered in-room porn until free porn on the Interwebs made that offering unprofitable. Bill and Richard will choose $$ every time. “Travail, patrie, argent….”
too many regs in China..-WHAT WOULD THE GOV DO IF ALL us HOTELS LEFT ?? NOT GOOD FOR THE TOURIST TRADE???They make alot of $$$from the US tourists and they want to stay in nice US backed hotels!!!!
@dot — other chains not headquartered would move in and pick up the slack. The buildings are already developed and built, so leaving would be a catastrophic loss for any hotel chain that has made those kinds of investments.