Panic at Ritz-Carlton: actress Jadie Lin claims 3-hour ordeal locked in 5-star hotel toilet in China before forcing lock with cable tie
- A Chinese actress has accused the Ritz-Carlton in Beijing of running a shoddy hotel and of poor service after she was trapped in a bathroom
- In a viral video posted online, the woman claimed she had a panic attack before using a cable tie attached to the toilet to force the door open
The Ritz-Carlton is under fire in China after an actress claimed she was locked in the luxury hotel’s bathroom for more than three hours in an online video viewed 350 million times on Weibo alone.
Jadie Lin Linqi posted the video on Douyin on March 13 about her experience at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Beijing’s Chaoyang District, which she said “had seriously harmed its guest’s personal safety”, Jimu News reported.
She said that on the afternoon of December 29, she used the toilet in her room at the hotel and locked the door but could not unlock it when she was finished.
Lin said she had left her mobile phone in the living room, and the toilet’s wall-mounted telephone was not working. She said she had no way to alert the hotel or the police. She also said there was no visible ventilation installed in the two-square-metre cubicle.
She said she banged on the door and the wall and yelled for help, but no one came to her aid.
“I felt frightened and had difficulty breathing,” she said in the video.
Lin then tried to use the bathroom’s iron toilet paper holder to smash the lock but could not open it and gave up after she tore the skin on one of her fingers.
“My heartbeat became fast, I was sweating,” Lin said. “I was thinking: if I fainted or suffocated to death, no one in this world would know that in this small room, there’s a person who cannot get out. What made me more scared was that I had no idea how long I had been trapped here.”
In desperation, she tried using a hard plastic cable tie she found binding the tubes connecting the toilet to the drain to turn the screws on the door lock. This time, she succeeded in unlocking the door.
“When I escaped the bathroom, I could not recover from the extreme scare. I felt my legs were weak, and my body kept shivering,” said Lin.
She reported the incident to the police later that evening. Officers soon arrived at her room and attempted mediation between the actress and the hotel. However, this did not result in a resolution, Lin claimed.
She further claimed the hotel did not contact her afterwards to follow up on the matter.
“After that incident, I often have nightmares. When I am in a lift, I will look around for a help button or an alarm. These things did not happen to me before,” Lin said.
The Ritz-Carlton said that it is still investigating and denied it had not taken the incident seriously, in a statement on Weibo on March 15, after Lin’s video went viral.
“On the day when the incident occurred, the hotel’s team checked the situation with the guest and offered our apologies,” the statement read.
“The management also sincerely apologised for the guest’s accident and offered a compensation proposal. But the guest and the hotel disagreed on the reconciliation.”
The hotel said it has been trying to contact Lin to reach a compensation agreement.
“After the accident, the hotel screened and checked all room locks, telephones and other hardware equipment to prevent this from happening again,” said the statement.
Lin’s experience shocked many internet users after it went viral.
“This hotel should be punished severely for its non-standard management,” said one person on Weibo.
Another person said: “The hotel should put all uncertainties into consideration. In this case, the guest has escaped; otherwise, the hotel would face a grave aftermath”.
“This incident tells us: wherever you go, take your mobile phone with you,” a third person observed.
