Shark Fin Success

Good news! After receiving feedback from concerned people around the world following our earlier post on this topic, the Meritus Mandarin Hotel has withdrawn its promotion of mooncakes with shark fins, within 24 hours of our bringing this to the diving and conservation community’s attention.

The letter sent out by Ms. Lim Ee Jin, the Assistant Vice President, Marketing Communications & Public Relations for the hotel reads as follows:

“Dear [name].

Thank you very much for your email and valuable feedback.

The views of our customers are very important to us and we have taken note of concerns which have been expressed about the shark’s fin mooncakes. We have therefore decided to withdraw this promotion, with immediate effect. We are currently working to develop alternative options for our guests which will not involve the use of shark’s fin.

Your support is much appreciated and we hope to welcome you back to the revitalized Meritus Mandarin Singapore, and to the Pine Court Chinese Restaurant, in the near future.

If you have further queries, please feel free to contact me.”

Our thanks to Ms Lim for her prompt response, and to everyone who took a moment to write, call, or visit the hotel to express your views. We know there were a lot of you!

Please take a moment now to send a note of thanks to Ms Lim and the hotel at limeejin@meritus-hotels.com to let her know that we appreciate the responsiveness from the hotel management.

Of course, as some people rightly pointed out in the discussion of our original post, this alone will not change the world. It’s important to keep speaking up and letting merchants know how we feel about this issue and other similar ones.

For those of you in Singapore or who are regular visitors, there’s a new Facebook group that’s been started from this experience, with specific information about specific shark-fin related promotions and dishes offered by hotels in Singapore. Take a look, and consider helping out.