China Unveils Measures to Enhance Hotel Accommodation for Foreign Workers

China’s new measures aim to simplify hotel accommodations for overseas travelers by removing qualification barriers and improving service standards, payment convenience, and registration processes. This addresses challenges faced by foreign guests and supports China’s goals of high-level openness and inbound tourism growth, following complaints from foreign travelers.

China introduced new measures aiming to simplify hotel accommodations for overseas travelers by removing qualification barriers and enhancing service standards, payment convenience, and registration processes. These changes address previous challenges faced by foreign guests and support China’s broader goals of high-level openness and inbound tourism growth.

On July 25, 2024, the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) and six other departments jointly issued the Notice on Several Measures to Facilitate Accommodation for Overseas Personnel in High-Level Service and Opening Up (The Notice), to address the difficulties faced by inbound overseas travelers regarding hotel accommodation.

This follows up on several foreign travelers from Nigeria and the United Kingdom who left messages on the Chinese government website, reflecting that they were refused when attempting to check in at hotels in China.

To solve the issues flagged by overseas travelers, the Notice proposed accommodation facilitation measures in the following eight aspects: operating in compliance with the law, enhancing reception capacity, strengthening industry self-discipline, leveraging platform roles, optimizing registration management, ensuring smooth service channels, improving payment convenience, and fostering a friendly atmosphere.

We summarize the details of the proposed measures below:

Foreign travelers often encounter difficulties when attempting to check into hotels in China. Reasons for hotel refusals include not having the necessary qualifications for foreign guests or not knowing how to input information into the system.

In China, there used to be a rule that only foreign-related hotels, or “涉外酒店” (shè wài jiǔdiàn) can accommodate foreigners. Such hotels refers to accommodation facilities such as hotels, guesthouses, apartments, and resorts that have been approved by various levels of business administration and public security departments to accommodate foreigners, overseas Chinese, Hong Kong and Macau compatriots, and Taiwanese.

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