The number of inbound tourists staying overnight in Beijing during August - the month the city hosted the 2008 Olympics - dropped 7.2 per cent year-on-year, according to statistics from the Beijing Municipal Tourism Bureau.
Beijing received a total of 389,000 inbound overnight-stay tourists in
August, of which the total number of overseas tourists visitors was
356,000, a decrease of 4.1 per cent year-on-year. Of the remainder,
24,000 were from Hong Kong, down by 16.4 per cent; and 8,000 were from
Taiwan, a decrease of 57.3 per cent from the same 2007 period. In
August 2008, Beijing's star-grade hotels hosted a total of 708,000 domestic tourists, down 41.7 per cent year-on-year.
For the full year so far (to the end of August), Beijing has received
2,535,000 inbound overnight-stay tourists, down 8.9 per cent
year-on-year. No wonder all the shiny new international hotels in the
Chinese capital are loudly lobbying for the removal of visa
restrictions on overseas visitors to China. The normally busy Autumn
corporate travel season will determine whether the optimistic 2008
soundings of the hotel groups earlier this year can be fulfilled - though with the current global financial meltdown, industry optimism is rather shaky at present.
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