A foreign visitor in Shanghai Photo: VCG

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.

According to China's Exit and Entry Administration Law, when foreigners stay in hotels in China, the hotels shall register their accommodation in accordance with the regulations for the public security administration of the hotel industry, and submit foreigners' accommodation registration information to the public security organs in the places where the hotels are located.

Hotels must register guests' information. The guest's identification documents must be checked, and the registration must be truthful according to the specified items, according to the Measures for the Public Security Administration of the Hotel Industry.

For foreign guests, the accommodation registration form must be submitted to the local public security organ within 24 hours.

Therefore, both Chinese and foreign guests must comply with the legal requirements for accommodation registration, fulfilling their legal obligations, and public security organs shall guide hotels to submit accommodation registration information for Chinese and foreign guests according to the regulations.

Over the past few months, China has introduced six new measures to improve visa policies and five new measures to facilitate visits to China by foreigners, actively addressed the difficulties foreigners face in mobile payment, rolled out a visa-free entry policy for foreign tourist groups traveling to China by cruise ships, and set up fundamental regulations on the docking and resupply of international cruise ships at China's ports, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin told a press conference on Thursday.

During this year's Labor Day holidays, there were over 8 million inbound and outbound travelers, an increase of 35 percent compared with last year, Wang said.

Global Times