Star-level hotels in Beijing will conduct engineering conversion work aimed at "energy saving, water saving and health giving," according to the Beijing Municipal Green Hotel Management Office. Some 573 star-level hotels in the capital are being encouraged to conduct environmentally-friendly conversion.

According to international appraisal principles, green hotels must highlight two important areas: they must be "environmentally-friendly and beneficial to health." During a recent seminar on the subject sponsored by the office, He Lumin, president of the Beijing Yadu Science and Technology Co. Ltd., said that, currently, most star-level hotels in Beijing do not reach the requirement of 30 cubic meters of fresh air per hour per person as stipulated by the state's Indoor Air Quality Standard.

Most hotels in Beijing were designed and built 15 years ago and their common defect is to have an insufficient air replacement rate or none at all. The only way for the hotels to reach a comparatively high air standard is to widely adopt energy-saving air disposal plans on the premise that no "big surgical operations" or no "fundamental shake-up" is taken as part of the conversion process, he said.

The number of star-level hotels in China amounted to 8,880 by the end of 2002, according to statistics released by the National Tourism Administration. There were 175 five-star, 635 four-star, 2,846 three-star, 4,414 two-star and 810 one-star hotels.

Business takings of the hotels totaled 91.443 billion yuan (US$11.06 billion), a year-on-year increase of 15.111 billion yuan (US$1.83 billion). Star-level hotels contributed tax revenues valued at 4.865 billion yuan (US$587.2 million) in 2002, an increase of 899 million yuan (US$108.7 million) compared to 2001. In addition, the average hotel occupancy was 60.15 percent in 2002, up 1.7 percent.

(China.org.cn by Li Jingrong and Daragh Moller, November 25, 2003)