Interview with hotel manager Gregor Wateler + Vaccination rate among eldery

The Shangri-La hotel in Shanghai has just recently installed a go-kart track in the basement and a surfing facility by the pool. If China’s wealthy tourists can’t travel abroad, they spend their money in such luxury resorts.

But the Shangri-La is currently not what it used to be. During the lockdown, it has become a quarantine hotel. Instead of guests coming and going, catering three simultaneous weddings in three ballrooms, only silence reigns, and its doors remain closed. Of 800 employees, only 28 show up for work.

German hotel manager Gregor Wateler is the director of the hotel. Frank Sieren spoke with him about the hotel business amidst the fight against Covid. Being available as a quarantine hotel is still better for the large hotel than having no guests at all. But Wateler wishes for nothing more than a return to normality. What is particularly important in his opinion: “Uniform vaccination systems that apply worldwide, which allow everyone to travel safely and happily”.

It is hard to understand why China does not increase its vaccinations to get out of this predicament. The Chinese government forces millions of people to stay at home permanently in its fight against Covid. It has citizens dragged off, kills pets, and engages in unprecedented testing campaigns. But there is one thing it is not doing: mandatory vaccination for senior citizens. Even now, far too few elderly are protected against severe infections.

Our Beijing team sheds light on the causes. The main reason is almost trivial: There was hardly any psychological strain. After all, China experienced hardly any infections for two years. While Germans were only able to return to normal life thanks to vaccination, China’s elderly simply saw no discernible reason to get vaccinated. Find out what other reservations they have about the jab in today’s analysis.

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Finn Mayer-Kuckuk