Large "S" made by room lights on the face of the Fuzhou Shangri-La Hotel.[China Daily Fujian Bureau]

A Shangri-La Hotel in the city of Fuzhou, Fujian province asked its guests at its 414 rooms to use their respective room lights to form a 43-meter-tall, 36-meter-wide "S" curve on the hotel's exterior, on March 29, to show support for "Earth Hour", which is on the last Saturday in March, as part of a World Wildlife Fund for Nature effort to draw attention to the need for environmental protection.

There are Earth Hour posters in the hotel's hallways.[China Daily Fujian Bureau]

The hotel shut off lights in most of the building for staff use and turned the other lights down, in restaurants and on the exterior. At the same time, it encouraged guests to turn down air-conditioners and reduce electrical equipment use to consume less power and not change the bed sheets every day. It also encouraged employees to use the stairs instead of elevators, as part of its sixth participation in Earth Hour.

The hotel installed solar equipment in 2010 to replace its old boiler, cutting as many as 8.8 tons of fuel per month. Its toiletries are also made of PSM material that is about 70 percent degradable. And, starting in July 2012, it cost more than 350,000 yuan ($56,400) to begin using a paperless registration process, as Fujian’s first low-carbon hotel.

Hotel management say they will continue to work on sustainable development and trying to strike a balance between economic, social and environmental development.

Edited by Zhao Qian and Roger Bradshaw