Mobile Toilets in Scenic Areas

Mobile toilets are widely used in scenic areas, featuring various types and flexible adjustment methods to meet different needs.

Types of Mobile Toilets

• Grid-style Mobile Toilets: These have individual compartments, including pointed-roof models, equipped with partitions and rain-proof corridors. They are unisex, frequently used, and well-decorated, serving both as toilets and shower rooms to provide diverse services for tourists.
• "Tidal Toilets": These have been trialed in some parks and scenic areas in Shenzhen, Dongguan, Hangzhou, Wuhan, and Chongqing in recent years. They feature several "gender-neutral toilet stalls" and use movable signs or lockable sliding doors to dynamically adjust access permissions based on real-time visitor flow. For example, after being implemented in Qinghai Heidushan Scenic Area, the waiting time for women during peak hours was significantly reduced.

Characteristics of Mobile Toilets

• Portability: Mobile toilets can be moved as a whole and placed in locations with fixed or temporary needs to provide toilet services for the public and customers. They offer advantages such as modularity and ease of transportation, allowing them to be conveniently delivered to any location requiring toilet facilities and reused multiple times. This makes them highly suitable for scenic areas where visitor flow varies greatly and venues may need to be adjusted at any time.
• Flexible Adjustment to Handle Peak Periods: The emergence of "tidal toilets" provides a flexible solution to cope with peak tourist periods. By dynamically adjusting access permissions to toilet stalls, toilet usage efficiency is improved, effectively alleviating the problem of difficult toilet access for visitors, especially in scenic areas with a large number of female visitors, significantly reducing waiting times for women.

Problems and Rectifications

A "tidal toilet" at West Lake Scenic Area in Huizhou, Guangdong, sparked controversy due to its manually adjustable "movable sign" at the entrance. Ordinary visitors could easily change the sign, leading to confusion between male and female toilet areas and even causing toilet chaos and privacy breaches. Initially, the scenic area's customer service claimed that the signs were operated exclusively by staff and that on-site guides were present, but a reporter's visit revealed otherwise. Subsequently, the scenic area promptly implemented rectifications by removing the adjustable signs, planning to replace them with fixed slot-style door plates, and introducing multiple measures to improve the long waiting times for women during holidays.