Tourism gold rush yet to happen

Source: Xinhua/Shanghai Daily  |   2008-7-17  |     NEWSPAPER EDITION

JUST 22 days from the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, some of China's travel agencies said they had overestimated domestic travel demand for the host city.

Zhang Lei, a spokesman with the Shanghai-based Spring International Travel Service Ltd, said yesterday its Olympic tourist packages had met "a slack response."

"We offered customers a dozen Olympic travel routes with prices ranging from 2,000 yuan (US$293.63) to 7,000 yuan per person," Zhang said. The offer resulted in about 1,000 ticket sales, 50 percent lower than expected.

Zhang said his company had focused on family travel because the opening of the Games coincided with the summer vacation of schools.

Yin Jun, manager of the Jiangsu provincial branch of China Travel Service Ltd, attributed the poor response to the hefty travel costs involved in going to Beijing.

"Travel from Jiangsu to the national capital costs about 2,000 yuan per person on normal days, but our Olympic tourist packages are priced above 6,000 yuan on average," he said.

Yin said costs in the capital were to blame. For example, the price of a two-star hotel room would jump from 120 yuan to 1,200 yuan per day during the Games and the rental fee of a tourist bus would be more than triple the present 1,000 yuan a day.

Beijing is gearing up to welcome 500,000 foreign visitors and more than 500,000 domestic tourists to the August Games, according to an official forecast.

Security and traffic measures taken by the host city had scared away some potential customers, Yin said.

Although Shanghai travel agencies will not organize tour groups for the Olympic equestrian events in Hong Kong, they will still offer hotel and airline tickets for event ticket holders.

Tour agencies expect Hong Kong to be a popular destination during the Olympics.