Shanghai’s latest upscale hotel boasts filtered air typically 10 times cleaner than that outside and in-room pollution monitors – but in this lucrative new market, not everyone can be trusted
The newly opened luxury Cordis hotel looks much like many other high-end hotels in Shanghai, with its glass-sided swimming pool, vast twin ballrooms and upscale spa. But the first Cordis hotel on mainland China boasts something that is genuinely rare in big Chinese cities: clean indoor air.
Modest occupancy rates in the megacity’s 5,000-plus hotels mean operators have been desperately competing to attract guests with cheap deals and ever more luxurious features. In a city where air pollution as measured by PM2.5s – tiny particles deemed particularly harmful to health – recently increased 9% year-on-year and now regularly exceeds capital Beijing – one luxury hotel has a new wheeze.
Indoor pollution is a very serious threat. Most people spend 90% of their time indoors and exposures remain unexamined
In the future you can imagine wanting to go for a coffee or a meal, and you look up which place has the best indoor air
Related: A modest proposal for solving the air pollution crisis: a worker smog bonus
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