Lookin, yes that is an annoying China thing. I have had issues in Lounges and restaurants at numerous Chinese hotels (most chains, this is not a Hilton issue), where they are rude to Chinese guests of guests or try and pull charging games on them. I recall once at the Hyatt Beijing, being extremely embarrassed when maybe six of us were staying there, has a meeting in the lounge and our local Chinese partner came for a meeting and had one coffee. He disappeared for a few minutes and then I saw that he was signing some receipt, I asked what was going on , and they were charging him something like $50. Forgetting the fact that each of the six of us could have had a second person join them in the lounge for free, and forgetting the fact that the guy had only just arrived and had just ordered a coffee, HOW DARE THEY ask MY GUEST to pay anything. If something needed to be paid, then they have to ask ME...........Which is exactly why they do it this way, knowing that the Chinese guest of a guest does not want to be embarrassed or cause embarrassment, and will generally pay up quietly without alerting the foreign "guest" that thy are being charged something. When this happened the first time at the Hyatt, I raised holy hell with the GM of the hotel, who apologized and promised it would not happen again. When it happened a second time, I stopped staying there. That being said, it is something that has repeated itself (or permutations of it) over and over again throughout China.

Ian, it should never be an issue, if it is, just tell them to go and register the second guest to your room immediately.

In fact I recently had an issue at a certain Hilton hotel where I found it extremely cheap that instead of offering breakfast as they used to, that now they only offer a credit of $20, yet the cheapest possible breakfast is something like $23.99. When I pointed this out at Checkout, I got a shrug. So I then said, well, my wife came and left, and she shared breakfast with me, so I should get a $40 credit per day, the agent winked, and my small charges were gone.