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come into force. (Section 4(3)(a) Ordinance).
8. I do not understand paragraph 16(a) of the petition which says that the first three of the four main European Hotels (which are the Hong Kong, Peninsula, Repulse Bay and Gloucester Hotels) are "being run by the Hong Kong and Shanghai Hotels
The Governor Limited, one of your petitioners".
says in paragraph 8 of (19) that these four hotels have not represented against the Ordinance, and in fact neither the names of these hotels nor the phrase "Hong Kong and Shanghai Hotels Limited", appear in Schedule "A" to the petition, which purports to list the member hotels etc. of the petitioning Association.
9. The petition lays considerable stress paragraph 7(iii) on the fact that this Ordinance has been enacted because of complaints from a comparatively small number of residents in a limited class of hotels (to wit, what the Advisory Committee called "Residential Hotels" its class (b)). In fact the recommendations of the Committee were directed mainly against this liited class of hotel, as indeed the
petition states in paragraph 21; and of this class the Committee states inter alia paragraph 12(i)(a) of Schedule "c" to the petition "in our opinion the retes now charged are higher than are warranted".
e.g.
10. A specific plea is made (paragraph 22(e) of the petition) that Lucky and Tuk Lin Apartments have been wrongly classified. The Governor answers this in paragraph 10 of (19). On all points of comparative detail such as this I do not think we are in a position to differ from the recommendations of the Advisory Committee accepted by the Hong Kong Government. They have the local knowledge which alone can decide a point of this kind.
11. No objection of principle can be raised against the control of hotel charges. Price control is not a new thing. What is, I think, new here is the reservation of accommodation for permanent residents and it is for consideration whether this is justified, assuming that there may be something in the contention in paragraph 7(i) (q) of the petition that the basis of the hotel trade is the intended accommodation of transients. The answer to this is that in fact in Hong Kong some hotels do make a practice of providing accommodation for permanent residents. They did this before the war and they are still doing it.
The Advisory Committee (paragraph 11(1)(f) of Schedule "C" attached to the petition) recognise that their recommendation that a percentage of accommodation should be reserved for "residents" is contrary to the practice in the United Kingdom and other parts of the world and that it interferes with the normal course of the hotel industry.
Nevertheless