Several hotels in Changsha and Shanghai have been promoting the concept of the green hotel recently. Without a special request from their guests, they no longer provide such room service basics as toothbrush, toothpaste, slippers, comb, shampoo and bathing liquid.
At the same time, over twenty hotels in Kunming, capital of southwest China’s Yunnan Province, delivered a similar announcement. It seems that such throwaways in hotels will be withdrawn gradually.
However, the chief of the China Hotel Association argues that this is not appropriate at this time, given the living habits and acceptance level of Chinese guests. He suggested that hotels might establish some green floors on a trial basis and then gradual extend the concept. Currently, it’s important to improve the quality and simplify the packaging of the six throwaway items, he stressed. Even if the throwaways are withdrawn, any money saved should be used to reward guests, like decorating the rooms more attractively, lowering noise levels and providing purified water.
The Green Hotel Standard, the first regulation on China’s hotel industry, asks that hotels provide throwaways like toothbrush, comb, soap, slippers, and change them upon a guest’s request. Hotels may reduce the frequency of washing the towels, pillowslip, bed sheets, bathrobes, or simplify the packaging of throwaways, but they cannot simply withdraw them.
According to an explanation, withdrawal of throwaways not only is in the interests of environmental protection, but also follows the practice of overseas hotels. A hotel manager in Beijing complains that, for a medium-sized high-class (star ranked) hotel, a great deal of human resource and materials go into the throwaways, but many guests never use them at all. However, they create a rubbish problem and raise costs.
Guests, on the other hand, have different opinions on the action. A young man said he had got used to taking the six items with him on trips, rather than using the inferior goods provided by the hotels. Another man, who only gave his name as Zhu, however, worried about the inconvenience that might be caused if the service is canceled suddenly. Others mentioned that some money should be deducted from the room price if throwaways were withdrawn.
A survey, carried out among 682 citizens in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, showed only 16.3 percent agreed with the action, while over 30 percent stressed they would not stay in a hotel that failed to provide these goods.
Actually, the articles a star-ranked hotel should provide in their bathrooms are listed in The Division and Standard of Foreign-Related Tourism Hotels, although these reportedly are to be amended. Experts say that the key to the amendments will be how to balance high-class service with the green standard.
(china.org.cn by Tang Fuchun September 3, 2002)
