Sincere apology should be issued for discriminatory promotion

Heathrow Airport has said a duty free discount program by its commercial partner World Duty Free that required a minimum spend of ￡1,000 ($1,381) of Chinese travelers to receive a 20 percent discount but only ￡250 of others was “unacceptable”.

That incident became a scandal after being posted online by a Chinese student working part-time at the airport.

On Monday, World Duty Free pretended nothing happened and said good morning on its Twitter account, which was soon flooded with angry Chinese customers.

On Tuesday, World Duty Free issued a “statement” on Chinese social media, without offering an apology.

It was not until Wednesday that World Duty Free, obviously under pressure, issued a bilingual “apology”, although it insisted on calling the incident “confusing”.

It seems World Duty Free does not recognize how serious the incident is.

We urge World Duty Free to issue another statement that is a sincere apology.

We also hope other duty-free shops will learn a lesson. Chinese people have become rich in the past several years and they are willing to boost consumption worldwide, while doing so, they deserve the same treatment and courtesy as others.

Chinese people do not ask for privileges, just being treated fairly.

The author is a writer with China Daily.