Taiwanese hotel drops Marriott over China naming row

Marriott International, which previously suffered backlash in China for listing Chinese territories as countries, is now finding itself on the wrong side of a Taiwanese hotel owner for listing Taiwan as part of China.

In January, the Chinese government shut down Marriott’s local website for a week in reaction to the group listing Taiwan, along with Tibet, Macau and Hong Kong, as separate countries on its websites.

Marriott International may have thought it was taking the safe path by going on to list the hotel as ‘Taiwan, China’ on the simplified Chinese version of the booking site for members (typically used by mainland Chinese), and “Taiwan” on the traditional Chinese version (typically for Taiwanese).

But instead of keeping both sides happy, it has now incurred the wrath of RSL Corp, the owner of the Four Points by Sheraton Taipei, Zhonghe.

RSL Corp blasted its intentions to terminate its franchise agreement with the parent group in an advertisement on the front page of the local paper, Liberty Times.

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