"Business is worse than at this time last year," said a receptionist at
a 22-room hotel in Beijing’s Chongwen district, where rooms cost $28 a
night. "It’s the season for traveling and last year the hotel was full.
The Olympics should have brought business to Beijing, but the reality
is too far from the expectation."
Many of the events are not very crowded, so:
To remedy the problem, officials are busing in teams of state-trained
"cheer squads" identifiable by their bright yellow T-shirts to help
fill the empty seats and improve the atmosphere.
Here is the story.
If you want more business execs to book hotel rooms in China, you’ll have to put me on the bill. And on the mattress. Stark naked.
Beijing is a crowded city, let alone during the Olympics, which the government hyped. For non-Olympic tourists, it’s the Yogi Berra scenario: nobody goes there because it’s too crowded. On top of that hotels raised prices, which contributes to the idea of high demand, in addition to detering tourists on a budget.
Few people from out of town went to the 1984 LA Olympics either — it was widely assumed at the time that smog, terrorism, traffic jams, and earthquakes would lay waste to LA, none of which happened. In contrast to Beijing, however, local Southern Californians turned out in vast numbers for most events, making that Olympics extremely profitable.
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