Opinion

Stop Hainan hotels' gouging

(China Daily)
Updated: 2010-03-01 14:33

The government's plan to develop Hainan into a top international tourist destination has raised its rates to the sky, scaring many potential visitors away from the island province during Spring Festival and thus achieving exactly the opposite result, says an article in China Youth Daily. Excerpts:

Going by experience, room rates in Hainan province's hotels were expected to rise during the Spring Festival. But there were ridiculously high rates this time.

The government's plan to turn Hainan into an "international tourist destination" is more or less still confined to paper. So what the island's authorities and hotels should have done is offer packages to attract as many tourists as possible. What we saw instead is a dramatic rise in room rates - more than 10,000 yuan a night, which is equal to a couple of months' salary for most Chinese.

More arbitrarily, some hotels even cancelled previous bookings of many guests in order to fleece other tourists by making them pay several times more for the same rooms.

The government has to take immediate steps to nip this unscrupulous trend in the bud if it really wants to make Hainan a top international tourist destination.