Michelle Obama 2-Day Hotel Stay in
China Costs $222K
First lady's group
used 144 rooms at Shangri-La Hotel.
Send to
Kindle
Michelle
Obama wrapped up her March visit to China with a stop in Chengdu, arriving
on March 25 and departing for the United States on the following day. But that
one leg of the trip alone required about 900 room nights, ranging from 21 rooms
beginning on March 13 for the advance team to a peak of 144 rooms
when the first lady herself was at the hotel.
The documents prepared
in support of the stay estimated the cost at around 1,393,500 yuan (RMB),
or $222,000 at current exchange rates:
According
to the documents, one of the factors in choosing the Shangri-La
Hotel was a security consideration that "will allow party to occupy
the entire top two floors for the visit."
The documents also
state that the local Ritz-Carlton had expressed interest in hosting the first
lady, but:
in
preliminary price comparisons, the cost was sufficiently more than the Shangri-La.
We requested a price reduction but a great cost difference remained for the
both the Executive Junior Suites, that will serve as control rooms, and the
Presidential Suite.
Related Stories
More by Jeryl Bier
The cost of the first lady's
hotel room for the Beijing portion of her trip, reportedly $8,400/night, raised
some eyebrows at the time. As THE WEEKLY STANDARD reported,
the prices of the Westin Chaoyang Hotel where Mrs. Obama and her group
stayed had been deemed "prohibitive" for Vice President Biden's trip
to China in December 2013.
So far, the documents for the
Chengdu portion of Mrs. Obama's trip are the only ones that have been posted
online by the State Department. Mrs. Obama was in China March 19-26.
No comments:
Post a Comment