Beijing plays down worries on Olympic hotel bookings

By Ben Blanchard

BEIJING (Reuters) - Beijing officials on Tuesday sought to downplay worries about low hotel reservations for next month's Olympics, insisting the numbers were in line with expectations and refusing to draw a link with new visa controls.

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."

Over the same period last year, four-star hotels had booking rates of close to 70 percent, but there are now 20 more hotels competing for business than last year in Beijing, Xiong added.

"Beijing is doing quite well for accommodation resources," she said.

Yet just a few weeks ago, Xiong's boss Zhang Huiguang implied that there was a different reason for low hotel bookings -- the storm of bad publicity surrounding China in the run-up to the Games, potentially putting off visitors.

Since the start of this year, southern China has been hit by freak freezing weather, which cut power to millions, there has been violent unrest in Tibetan areas, anti-Chinese protests on the international leg of the Olympic torch relay and a huge earthquake in Sichuan.

There have also been warnings from Interpol that terrorists may target the Games, and the government has claimed to have broken up a plot by ethnic Uighurs from China's restive far western region of Xinjiang to attack the Olympics.