Evergreen apologizes over Chinese flag furor at Paris hotel

Taipei, Aug. 15 (CNA) The management of Taiwan's Evergreen Laurel Hotel on Thursday issued an apology for not including the Chinese flag in the Olympics decor at its Paris hotel, which had offended some of its patrons.

The hotel, which is a hospitality subsidy of Taiwan's Evergreen Group that also runs companies like Evergreen Marine Corp. and EVA Air, said in a statement that it has always adhered to the "customer first" approach to provide its guests with the best experience.

In an online statement, the hotel said it wished to apologize for its Paris branch's lack of consideration in the flag controversy and will continue to train its employees to prevent any recurrence of such incidents.

The apology stemmed from an issue a few days earlier, which was publicized on TikTok on Aug. 13 by a Chinese content creator who had a booking at the Evergreen Laurel Hotel in Paris and refused to check in when he noticed that the China flag was not among those on display in the hotel lobby.

In the TikTok video, the man and his team were seen trying to convince the hotel staff to include the Chinese flag in the Olympics decor, and they offered to provide one they had taken from their vehicle.

The front desk staff said, however, that the permission of the hotel manager would be required, and that was not possible because they could not contact the manager on the weekend.

The content creator and his team then decided not to check in, opting instead to pay a cancellation fee, and they left the premises. They later spoke with a Chinese individual, said to be a member of the hotel's kitchen staff, who told them that a Chinese flag had been included in the lobby decor but was removed by one of the Taiwanese managers.

When the content creator returned to the hotel on a weekday to speak with the hotel management, he was told that the national flags displayed in the Olympics decor at the hotel had been randomly selected and the Chinese flag was not included, a subsequent TikTok video showed.

Furthermore, the hotel reserved the right to decorate its lobby as it chose, one of the managers said, adding that the Olympics decor was about to taken down anyway.

The TikToker insisted that a Chinese flag should be put up before the decor was removed, but the hotel management apologized, saying that was not possible.

The videos have since been shared in Mandarin speaking communities worldwide, drawing diverse opinions, with some netizens supporting the hotel's stance and criticizing the content creator, and vice versa.

Since the videos were posted, a number of Chinese travel sites have removed the Paris and Shanghai branches of the Evergreen Laurel Hotel from their booking services.

In the statement issued Thursday in simplified-Chinese on the websites of the hotel's Shanghai branch, it apologized for the controversy and for disappointing its patrons.

It pledged to provide a better hospitality experience to its guests and to improve its service.

The hotel company also said that Evergreen Group's late Chairman Chang Yung-fa (張榮發) had dedicated his life to bilateral trade cooperation across the Taiwan Strait, and it had no wish to rattle cross-strait relations.

As such, the hotel branch will maintain Chang's ideals and continue to help cultivate peaceful cross-strait relations, the company said.