Beijing Imperial Palace Hotel accused of fraud

The Beijing Imperial Palace Hotel is accused of hiring over 700,000 rooms for the two years between 2015 and 2017 for over 250 million Hong Kong Dollars in payments that were made in advance.
Earlier, the hotel had been ordered by the Tourism Activities Centre of the Government Tourism Office (MGTO) to close for six months due to “serious administrative irregularities which constitute threats to public safety.”
On Monday, more than 30 people who claim to be victims of the hotel’s closure, formed an alliance and told the media that they were cheated by the management in charge of the hotel, which was previously named as New Century Hotel.
According to a report by Jornal Cheng Pou, the hotel has only 599 rooms in total, despite the fact that it was selling more rooms than it could physically provide. The victims who are mainly from travel agencies and tourism related industries in Macau, Hong Kong and the Mainland, said that they all had settled reservation payments to the hotel in advance. Last year however, the individuals were told by the hotel’s management that it would decline further reservations, with the hotel refusing to provide the rooms that had been reserved and paid for previously. Moreover, the hotel had resold the rooms to other agencies after the aforementioned information had been disclosed to its customers.
These people forwarded the case to the Public Prosecutions Office, calling for the department to investigate whether the hotel had committed fraud or not. Some of the individual buyers also sought assistance from the Macau Consumer Council.
The group also expects to engage in discussion with the person responsible for the hotel.