London hotel slammed for jesuischarlie hashtag
A trendy London hotel has apologised to visitors to its Facebook site who were offended by its ‘shameless’ use of #jesuischarlie to promote its new opening in Paris.
The Hoxton Hotel in east London used the hashtag when posting photos of its new Paris hotel on its Facebook site, but further outraged visitors by misspelling it.
The coment said: "Proud to be opening out second European hotel in Paris 2016. Very chic don’t you think?#jesuischarile
The hashtag jesuischarlie has been used on Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites to show global support for the 17 people who were gunned down last week during terrorist attacks at the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and at a Paris supermarket.
In response to the Hoxton hotel posting, one user wrote: "Hey, nice work – using an act of terrorism and the loss of lives to promote your new hotel…and spelling the hashtag wrong".
Others said it was in poor taste, shameless and uncool. One wrote: "Awesome hotel, definitely going to be checking it out. But the hashtag…really? Come on guys, not cool."
The hotel has since removed the post and issued the following statement: "Earlier today a member of our team posted renderings of our upcoming hotel opening in Paris. At the end of the post Ի#jesuischarlie was used to show our solidarity with the victims of the attacks in Paris. In no way was it our intention to use these atrocities to promote our new hotel. This would not only be completely insensitive but unacceptable in our eyes.
"In hindsight, it was extremely poor judgement and clearly not intended to be perceived in the way it has. We have since removed the post on Facebook and we would like to sincerely apologise for any offence it may have caused."
Linsey McNeill
Editor Linsey McNeill has been writing about travel for more than three decades. Bylines include The Times, Telegraph, Observer, Guardian and Which? plus the South China Morning Post. She also shares insider tips on thetraveljournalist.co.uk
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