A duty-free store at London’s Heathrow Airport has issued an apology on Chinese social media for treating Chinese travelers differently to its other customers during a recent discount campaign, Caixin reports.
World Duty Free Group offered a voucher for customers who spent more than £250 at its eight stores at the airport, but Chinese customers had to spend four times that amount to receive the same voucher.
“After close self-examination and having made further investigations, we have taken urgent steps to correct the implementation of this promotion going forward,” the company said in a statement on Weibo, the Chinese micro-blogging site, on Tuesday.
The statement came after a public outcry in China, sparked by a Weibo post published by a Chinese student who works part-time at one of the World Duty Free stores at Heathrow. The student’s post highlighting the store’s discriminatory policy was shared more than 87,000 times.