Given the culture of fear and intimidation in Tibet and the severe consequences Tibetans risk if they express their opinions, it is unclear if and how IHG met its own commitment to undertake a social impact assessment before any building works are carried out or how it plans to engage regularly with local community leaders to identify and resolve any rights issues.

- Interviews with Tibetans in Lhasa exposed that knowledge of InterContinental Hotels Group’s planned resort is very sparse. This may indicate that the Tibetan population is not being consulted or involved in the project to a great extent.

- Tibetan employees from other international hotel construction sites who were interviewed were concerned that most of the people who gained employment in the project were Chinese, and those Tibetans who had gained employment were being paid less for the same jobs. This is common in Lhasa.

- The Chinese state implements a policy of Mandarin as the language of instruction in most schools and institutions of higher education in the Tibetan Autonomous Region. This is driven in part by its strategy to cement its occupation of Tibet. The reuslt of this policy is that many Tibetan students, for whom Tibetan is their first language, do not complete primary education and even fewer attend higher education.

Because Chinese language and business cultures dominate in Tibet under Chinese occupation, to participate in the ‘economic revolution in Tibet’, Tibetans must be fluent in Chinese, which the majority of Tibetans are not.

As such many Tibetans will be unable to meet the likely recruitment criteria for employment in the InterContinental resort in Lhasa – especially for management posts. The people who benefit the most from the InterContinental Hotels Group Lhasa Resort will not be Tibetans.