China orders probe into Marriott for listing Tibet as country

China has ordered an investigation after the Marriott hotel chain reportedly listed Tibet as a "country" in an e-mail questionnaire survey.

The cyberspace administration and market supervision bureau of Huangpu district in Shanghai said they had conducted interviews with the company's representatives in China and ordered all related content to be removed from its website and mobile app.

Authorities are investigating Marriott International after the US-based hotel corporation categorised Chinese territories as "country" in an e-mail questionnaire to its members, which caused a stir among Chinese netizens, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

Previously, a Chinese internet user had posted a screen shot of Marriott's questionnaire, which listed Tibet, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan as options under the question "Which country are you from?"

Marriott, which has 124 hotels in China has apologised twice on its Weibo social media account amid calls by netizens to boycott the hotel chain.

"We are deeply sorry for the questionnaires," state-run Global Times earlier quoted a Marriott statement as saying.

"We realised that this mistake would deeply disappoint our Chinese customers. For now, we have suspended the questionnaires and fixed the options at once. We apologise for the inconvenience caused by the incident," the company said.

(This article has not been edited by Zeebiz editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)