In China, the plush international hotel lobby has been one of the few places to find gaps in the "Great Firewall," a sophisticated system that denies online users access to blocked content such as foreign news portals and social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter .

Now, though, that small crack in the system may be closing, too, as Beijing tightens control over what it sees as its domestic cyberspace, mimicking real-world border controls and subject to the same laws as sovereign states.

Regulators have warned firms providing internet networks for hotels to stop offering, or helping to install, virtual private networks (VPNs) into hotel systems — tools that allow users to evade, at least partially — China's internet censors.