Beijing hotels target Olympic gold

Beijing's tourism industry - and its hotels - are looking forward to breaking records during next year's Olympics when the city expects to welcome more visitors and earn more money than ever before.

City hotels, from budget to five-star luxury, are cashing in by racking up room rates in anticipation of high occupancy for August 2008, when the Beijing Games take place. "You can still get a room but we prefer cash and a block booking, not just a night or two," said a hotel booking official who asked not to be named.

The Chinese capital expects to receive a massive 500,000 visitors, up from 350,000 in August last year, during Beijing's Olympic month. And with 15 months still to go until the August 8, 2008 opening ceremony, excitement is also bubbling overseas, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) says.

"All over the world attention to the Games is mounting, there is a vibration," said senior IOC member Hein Verbruggen on a recent trip to Beijing. "People believe that next year there is going to happen something absolutely great in this country."

The deputy head of Beijing's tourism administration, Xiong Yumei, said the city would offer beds for some 500,000 overseas visitors in August 2008. Beijing's massive construction boom ahead of the Olympics includes billions of dollars invested in the hotel sector.

Currently the Chinese capital boasts 700 star-rated hotels and another 100 are being built or renovated this year.

"Altogether we will have about 570,000 beds," she told AFP. "Capacity will be no problem."

Those foreign visitors are expected to spend about five billion dollars, up 25 percent from around four billion in August 2006, according to the tourism administration.

The Beijing Olympic organising committee has block-booked 112 hotels for visiting VIPs, officials and sponsors. Foreign dignitaries including heads of state are expected to take the pick of the top-scale suites.

Big foreign investors such as Coca-Cola, Adidas and Volkwagen, sponsors of the Games, are snapping up entire hotels between them to offer lavish Olympic hospitality to clients and potential customers.

Hotel room-rates are already sky-rocketing. Even hotels block-booked by the Beijing Olympic organising committee, on the understanding that rates will not spiral, plan to cash in, according to state media reports.

Pre-Games rates at Beijing five-star hotels hover at around 1,500 yuan (200 dollars) but will at least double for next August.

The Zhaolong, one of Beijing's five-star hotels, has been taking bookings since the beginning of the year and only has suites left which can be booked for 9,000 yuan a night, six times the current 1500 yuan.

Budget hotels, freer from oversight by officials, are aiming even higher, with some targeting 10-fold increases.

Beijing tourism, non-existent as an industry two decades ago, is now a major services sector representing some eight percent of gross domestic product with revenue growth of some seven percent a year.

"It is a hugely important industry for the city in terms of jobs and income and the Olympics is an added factor," said Xiong.

Beijing officials reject reports the Olympics will dampen tourism, rather than enhance it, because visitors avoid the crowds and higher prices associated with the Games. Of the half million foreign visitors expected in August 2008, most will be sports officials or fans coming for the Games.

"It is true that the number of pure tourists will fall off a bit," said Xiong. "But just because you come for the Olympics doesn't mean you are not going to the Great Wall."

AFP