Hidden-camera videos of housekeeping staff behaving badly at Chinese luxury hotels surface fairly often on social media.
Seven of the hotels filmed were in the city of Shanghai, where the local tourism authority is conducting investigations into the issues raised in the video, according to the state-owned Global Times newspaper.
Since the video was posted to Twitter-like Weibo on Wednesday, it has racked up more than 30 million views.
A Chinese whistle-blower has created another storm online by posting a video that purports to show staff in more than 100 upmarket hotels not following hygiene protocols when cleaning rooms, using the same soiled towels to wipe drinking cups and toilets. A self-employed investor, he claimed to have spent 2,000 nights at 147 luxury or boutique hotels in the country over the past six years.
Eleven of the 14 hotels involved have apologised since the video went viral, and China's Ministry of Culture and Tourism has ordered investigations into the apparent breaches of hygiene standards.
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High-end hotels in China run by worldwide chains Marriott, Hilton and Hyatt have issued apologies after a video went viral, showing unhygienic practices, including one cleaner who used the same sponge to wipe drinking cups and a toilet. At the Waldorf Astoria in Shanghai, meanwhile, a housekeeper is shown wiping down a room's sink, toilet seat, and cups with the same sponge.
The Shangri-La Hotel in Fuzhou, a city in eastern China, whose cleaner was shown using a used guest towel to clean a room's mirror and a drinking glass, said the video showed a violation of standards and apologised.
China is the fastest growing major market for the world's top hotel chains as rising incomes have led to domestic travel spending increasing at double-digit rates.
Wu Dong, the blogger who made and shared the video, identified himself in an introduction as a person who may have stayed at the most hotels in China. The video purports to show a member of staff lifting a plastic cup lid from a bin and wiping it on their T-shirt. The hotel chain apologized in a statement posted to Weibo.
Online, netizens' comments suggest that they have become resigned to the frequently exposed problem. "But some people have no bottom line", said another Weibo user. "I'm so glad that a 5,000-yuan hotel is just as dirty as a 500-yuan one".
