Rooms running out for the Beijing Olympics
An AAP report says Beijing hotels are already well-booked for the Olympic Games next year, so if you’re planning to go to Beijing to watch the Olympic Games next year, make a booking now if you want accommodation you can afford.
An estimated 550,000 overseas tourists and 2.58 million domestic visitors are expected to arrive in Beijing for the 2008 Games from August 8-24. That’s an extra three million people in a region whose population already stretches to 15 million, with eight million in the city centre alone.
The athletes, officials and most of the media will be housed in Olympic villages but the waiting lists at Beijing’s top hotels are already filling up, according to the official China Daily newspaper.
And BOCOG, the organising committee of the Beijing Games, has already signed service contracts with 112 star-rated hotels, which has effectively swallowed up 70 to 95 per cent of their rooms. Most of these BOCOG-booked hotels are in the northern part of the city, where there are many Olympic venues.
The prices for leftover rooms at the BOCOG-booked hotels and the remaining star-rated hotels not snapped up by the organisers are either not fixed yet, or in some cases spiralling out of control.
The Shangri-La Beijing has already filled 70 to 80 per cent of its rooms for August next year by putting guests on a waiting list, but has not yet fixed its prices.
The Kunlun, which will allocate 70 per cent of its rooms to BOCOG, plans to raise its deluxe room rate from 1280 yuan a night to 12,000 yuan during the Games and some are concerned that such profiteering may drive potential Olympic fans away unless the government sets a ceiling, which the city’s policy makers are reluctant to do.
The city also has more than 4000 unrated hotels.
Report by The Mole
John Alwyn-Jones
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