Marriott employee to be fired for ‘mistakenly liking’ pro-Tibet tweet

One way to lose your social media job

As expected, the axe is falling down on a Marriott employee who helped to contribute to last week’s political scandal which saw the American hotel chain apologize for hurting the feelings of the Chinese people and disavow separatist elements.

The company was caught last Tuesday sending out a survey to its rewards club members which listed Tibet, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau as separate “countries.” To make matters worse, its official rewards Twitter account was also found to have “liked” a tweet from a pro-Tibet account which congratulated the chain for recognizing Tibetan independence.

According to Xinhua, Craig Smith, President and Managing Director of Asia Pacific for Marriott International, said that the employee responsible for “mistakenly liking” the tweet from Friends of Tibet had already been suspended and proceedings to sack the worker were underway.

In addition, Smith explained that the controversial questionnaire had actually been produced by an outsourcing company and that Marriott had suspended its dealings with the company.

However, it turns out that Marriott is far from the only company to have committed the cardinal sin of doing business in China. Chinese state media reports that at least 24 airlines disrespect China’s sovereignty on their websites by listing Taiwan, Tibet, Hong Kong, or Macau as “countries,” typically on drop-down lists.

One such airline was Delta, which was made to apologize on Friday, other foreign airlines have warned to check the accuracy of their listings and quickly rectify any mistakes in order to comply with Chinese regulations.