My Chinese wife is looking to book air tickets from the net to Beijing and Jiangsu for summer travel. The alst hree sites she checked that offered discounts offered them to Chinese citizens only and foreigners paid higher fare. I thought those days were over when restaurants had separate menus for Lao Wai and hotels had higher rates. Guess not. If the US did this you can bet the netizens here would be screaming racisma dn discrimination but here it is business as usual... screwing anyone you can for as much as you can without any sound reason.

I and others have pointed this out before but plenty of other foreigners seem to think it's perfectly fine (for unknown and possibly obscure reasons) so we've decided to let it go for now :) On a second note I am a bit surprised you didn't know about this unreasonable practice beforehand since you are married to a Chinese?

Dan Mai Ren

Actually we have ran into the issue before but not in such numbers. I think it was 4 sites before we found one who did not care. I have been refused at 5 hotels becasue I am foreign. 3 of those I am sure were due to the hotel lacking the proper papers for allowing foreigners to stay, but the other two two the opinions of the girl at the desk. One was right in KM! That place on the corner of Wen Lin Jia and Wen Hua Xiang, next to the Japanese comic bookstore or whatever it is. I stayed there anyway as we booked the room in advance when we first came here.

I accept these matters actually but today it really pissed me off. I later had a shower and coffee and am back to normal :)

Thanks
Bill

Bill, all can say is you must be traveling extremely low rent mode. I have been uin China 5 years and travel extensively all over. Never have I been refused a hotel room! If you have been refused, I doubt it has to do with being a foreigner. Something else going on there.

Double pricing? Everybody does it. Thailand, Malaym, PPm, you name it. Right or wrong, it comes with the territory. Small price to pay to live well and enjoy a much better life than say.......the USA. Bottom line...smarten up.
Example; taxi driver won't take you where you want to go. Usual excuse, shift change. Solution.....tell them you will pay 200 RMB (normally 30 RMB). I guarantee you they will take you, massage you, give you their daughter, etc. In other words great service, treated like a king...problem solved. Try it, you will see it works perfectly. Money talks, bullshit walks brother.
BTW, when you arrive in the taxi, throw 30 RMB at him and walk away. Nuf said.........................

Hello,

Yes its true and i have mentioned it before here .specially China eastern which clearly say to you during booking you cannot take the low fare which is for local citizens .They also required to stay in a big hotels like 2 stars and above .You cannot also register your stay in poor neighborhood but Good Xiao Xu .Which all together make a big pressure on me .Not all the foreigners came from rich countries neither they have a work here.Who listens who cares!!!!

That's racist. I thought if you book an airfare, everyone pays the same. You can't charge people differently, just because they have brown hair and a big nose or dark skin compared to yellowish skin and a flat nose.

I will be boycotting travel by air in China if this is the case, since that would be like government regulated discrimination.

On a more local everyday scale you may encounter it, but I wouldn't expect hotels or airlines to do it anymore. Conversely, it's not right, but it's somewhat more acceptable (if it can be considered acceptable at all) for small scale operators such as taxi drivers to rip you off, but every time I've gotten into a taxi in Kunming I've only ever been charged the metered rate, sometimes even without being asked for the extra 1 Yuan fuel surcharge, and that's by barely speaking Chinese at all!

In Thailand and other countries in the region this may happen, but keep in mind that some of those countries have high tourist and expat numbers and Thailand is becoming so international these days that only small scale operators (e.g. someone selling you a t-shirt on the street or a taxi driver) would dare try to charge a foreigner more than a local but hey- this forum is about China so let's leave the Thailand or other country discussion for another forum.

I had the same issue using websites for booking, but if you go to a local travel agency somewhere in KM I usually get the local citizen discount fare..

About hotels, if they refuse you offer them to sign up with the local public security bureau yourself, worked for me in pingxiang/guangxi when we wanted to stay there a night to cross into vietnam the next morning...the public security was confused and told us everything is ok, copied the passport and called the hotel to know which room we are in...
@Tom69 you might read something about races, national states and so on. they dont charge you extra for your skin color but for your passport ;) why should states or companies not be allowed to subsidize their own nationalities so they can travel more? ;) and if they have extra paperwork to do and get extra certificates and so on to host you in their hotel, why shouldn't they charge you for that?

in general you get much better prices or often almost same prices as the locals if you are nice and polite and bargain a bit (it is really fun for both sides). thailand and vietnam are much worse in this respect than yunnan...

14x sorry, but I beg to differ. I don't think Thailand and Vietnam are worse than China...neither country charges foreigners extra to fly. Btw I know plenty about nation states and since you're probably a foreigner, I don't see how or why you are supporting a system that clearly discriminates against you.

Also, the USA, Australia don't charge foreigners extra to fly in their countries (and if they did TRUST ME there would be people who would complain), so you can't come up with the flawed argument that foreigners should subsidize the cost of local's travels. Certainly not in China anyway. China has 1.35billion people and compared to its gigantic population foreigners are barely noticeable and represent a tiny fraction of the people present in China at any one time, therefore no airline in China is going to be making any extra money by charging foreigners extra as the vast majority of passengers on any given flight are Chinese. Hell, even on flights to/from other countries on Chinese carriers, you'll be hard pressed to find more than about 10-20 non-Chinese passengers...

No, companies should be interested in making profits not subsidizing the cost of someone's travels just because of the way they look (yes, I'm saying it again because ultimately that's the only way of looking at it). The government is saying...lets subsidize our own and charge foreign devils more...how is that not discrimination? You should get a dictionary and check the meaning of discrimination buddy.

I have the right to express my views and I find it abhorrent to charge foreigners more than locals...nothing you say can change my mind on that and I've decided I won't fly with China Eastern or any airline that practices such discrimination, period.

I'm a consumer and I have the right to choose the companies I want to do business with, just like you and everyone else in modern China.

It's really a two way street. I don't get upset or worry about something I have no power to change. So instead I just manage my things in China, netting me 100 times over in profits than what I pay out in "extra" fees. I consider it the simple cost of doing business in China. In the end, I laugh all the way to the bank!