"It Does Matter Where You Stay: International Hotel Chains in East Turkistan", Uyghur Human Rights Project, 17 April 2025

Hilton, through a franchisee, built a Hampton by Hilton hotel on the site of a demolished mosque in Khotan, following an extensive government campaign that left more than 10,000 mosques destroyed throughout the region. Despite international scrutiny, including an inquiry from the US Congress in 2021, the hotel opened for visitors in 2024.

Accor has been exposed to Uyghur forced labor in two ways: (1) through a franchisee’s participation in a “labor transfer” program called the Hundred Project (百名工程); and (2) through its strategic partner in China, H World Group Limited (华住酒店集团), which has benefitted from “Xinjiang Aid” (对口援疆) programs, identified by experts as a high-risk indicator of Uyghur forced labor.

Accor’s Grand Mercure Urumqi Hualing hotel has conducted training and recruitment through a state-run “labor transfer” program.

[...] Websites including Booking.com, Priceline, Agoda, and Kayak (all owned by Booking Holdings, headquartered in the United States), Expedia.com, Hotels.com, Orbitz, Travelocity, and Trivago (all owned by Expedia Group, headquartered in the United States), and Tripadvisor promote dozens of hotel listings across the region without reference to ongoing atrocities, further enabling hotel expansion.

[...] another 35 hotels opened from 2023 to April 2025, including a Hilton hotel in Khotan built on the site of a demolished mosque. [...].

[...] another 74 hotels in various stages of investment, planning, and construction from Accor, Hilton, Hyatt, IHG, Marriott, Minor Hotels, and Wyndham.

Marriott plans to open a Ritz-Carlton hotel in Ürümchi in 2026 [...] IHG plans to open an InterContinental Hotel in Ghulja City, the “InterContinental Yining” in the third quarter of 2025. [...].

In one problematic case involving Hilton, [...] Huan Peng Hotel Management, a Hampton by Hilton franchisee, was constructing a hotel on the site of a demolished mosque in Khotan. [...] In response, Hilton distanced itself from its role in the selection of the site, stating that its corporate franchise model “limits Hilton’s involvement in the development and management of properties.”

[...] the Hundred Project amounts to a forced labor program, from which Accor’s Grand Mercure Ürümchi Hualing has benefited.

In addition to connections with the Hundred Project, the parent company of Xinjiang Hualing Hotel Co., Ltd. (新疆华凌大饭店有限责任公司)—the management company which appears to manage the Grand Mercure Ürümchi Hualing—is Xinjiang Hualing Industry & Trade (Group) Co., Ltd. (新疆华凌工贸（集团）有限公司) (Hualing Group). In June 2017, Hualing Group received 160 “surplus minority laborers” from Kashgar and Hotan as part of a government-organized “poverty alleviation” program aimed at “promoting regional stability.”

On January 14, 2025, the authors sent emails to Accor S.A., Inc., Hilton Hotels & Resorts, InterContinental Hotels Group, Marriott International Inc., and Wyndham Hotels & Resorts Inc. informing them that their company had been named in a forthcoming report. The email addresses of the international hotel chains are all publicly listed. We received no responses. On February 7, 2025, the authors sent a follow-up email to the same five companies. We received no responses to our communications.