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Rooms glut in Olympic City
BEIJING – Rooms are going begging one month out from the Beijing Olympics with hotels reporting lower-than-expected advance bookings and crossing their fingers for a late influx of tourists.
AFP reports that with few exceptions – notably some niche hotels in Beijing’s old quarter – hotels are facing a battle to fill rooms.
So far the luxury sector has come off best with top hotels achieving 75 percent booking rates while four star hotels are less than half full and bookings for three-star hotel rooms are running at 30 percent, according to the Beijing Tourism Bureau.
Only 10 percent of rooms in the more modest tourist hotels are booked, it said.
The boutique hotels that have recently begun to emerge in what is left of Beijing’s old city seem to be acquitting themselves well in the intense pre-Olympic struggle for customers.
Room charges have more than quadrupled in the run-up to the Games.
Home owners were also hoping to cash in on Olympic fever with some deciding to offer their apartments for rent to visitors at a significant premium.
Three-bedroom apartments that normally rent for around 6,000 yuan (US$850) are on offer for 1500 yuan a day during the August 8-24 Games.
“We were told there would be a lack of beds so property owners got rid of tenants and upped the rent for the Games period. Or if they were living in the apartment themselves, they decided to move out so they could rent the space,” said Song Zhi, who helps run the accommodation service lodgingatbeijing.com.
Xiong Yumei, deputy head of the Beijing Tourism Administration, told a news conference that more than half the rooms in four-star hotels in Beijing over the Olympic period were still available, though bookings were edging up slowly.
“This is what we expected,” she said. “There are still quite a lot of people from other cities and provinces who have tickets but have not yet booked rooms.
“When August comes, the occupancy rate will be much higher than the present booking rate.”
Ian Jarrett
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