“Whether you eat, play or sleep, polar bears will keep you company,” Harbin Polarland’s official WeChat account said in a March 11 report.
Photos and videos from Chinese state media showed people looking at two polar bears in an indoor room with artificial ice and small pools of water.
Yang Liu, a Harbin Polarland spokesman, told Reuters that the indoor area is only part of the bears, and that they are allowed outdoors if the temperature and air quality allow it.
She said the interest in the hotel, where rooms range from 1,888 to 2,288 yuan ($ 290.10 to $ 351.56) per night, was ‘very high’, adding that it was full during a trial period. discussed.
People take pictures of a polar bear inside a fence in a newly opened hotel in Harbin.
STR / AFP / Getty Images
Conservationists have criticized the hotel.
“Polar bears belong in the Arctic, not in zoos or glass cabinets in aquariums – and certainly not in hotels,” Jason Baker, senior vice president of animal rights group PETA, told Reuters. “Polar bears are active in the wild for up to 18 hours a day, and they roam around homes that can stretch thousands of miles, where they can enjoy real life.”
In 2016, a shopping mall in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou drew worldwide condemnation after videos emerged of a polar bear, Pizza, lying on her side in a walled glass wall.
Founded in late 2005, Harbin Polarland calls itself the world’s first amusement park for the performing arts.