New | Beijing officials bid adieu to five-star treatment
Leading hotels dropped from list of meeting venues in drive against extravagance
Beijing municipal officials who have acquired a taste for the good life will now have to downgrade their expectations after the city’s five-star hotels were ruled off-limits for meetings, local media reported.
As part of the nationwide campaign against extravagance and corruption, the city’s 27 top hotels are absent from a list 318 designated venues drawn up by the municipal procurement department for the 2014-2015 fiscal year, the Beijing Daily and Beijing Times reported.
The cheapest room on the list costs 80 yuan per head per day.
In accordance with Xi Jinping’s “eight rules” to rein in excessive bureaucracy and extravagance, the capital vowed to control its conference budget, one of the items most often cited as a source of corruption and wasteful spending of public funds.
The municipal government has been ordered to strictly monitor compliance with conference budget, the Beijing Times quoted an official from the procurement department as saying.
The government would also consider using cinemas for government meetings, the official added.