Few in China see Olympics windfall

BEIJING — Li Qiang can't wait for the Olympics to end today.

He had expected his Sichuan restaurant, located a couple of miles from the Olympic village, to be packed with tourists during the Games. But it's been unusually quiet. One day this week, business was so slow that Li let two of his seven staff members go home in the middle of the lunch hour. Three others sat in the corner watching tele vision.

"Everybody thought the Olympics would be great for business," he said. "It turned out differently."

Many owners of small restaurants, hotels and shops in Beijing are wearing long faces this summer — especially those who poured their life savings into buying businesses or sprucing up their shops ahead of the Olympics.

About a half-million foreign visitors were expected in Beijing this month. But with stricter visa restrictions and other hassles, many businesspeople think there are no more here now than there were last August, when 420,000 visitors from abroad came to the capital. In July, Air China, the nation's flagship carrier, saw its international passenger traffic fall by 19 percent from a year earlier.

The number of domestic tourists has been lower than expected, too. Fearing inflated prices for hotels and airline tickets, many Chinese apparently decided to watch the Olympics at home.

Wang Zhenghui, director of China's Hotel Association in Beijing, reckons that occupancy during the Olympics has been running about 50 percent to 60 percent. That's a far cry from the 70 percent to 80 percent hoteliers were projecting.

The 120 or so larger facilities designated as Olympic hotels are doing better, Wang said, as many had locked in bookings months in advance. But some of them have had to reduce their rates to fill rooms.

Apartment owners, too, had hoped to cash in on the Olympic bonanza, with some jacking up rents to five times normal levels, according to the official New China News Agency. But of more than 20,000 apartments posted for short-term rent, only 8,000 were leased during the Olympics, the report said.

In a traditional Beijing neighborhood near the centuries-old Drum Tower, a popular tourist attraction, the new owner of the Shuangsi or Double Temple Hotel had the Olympics in mind when he borrowed about $140,000 from the bank to buy the two-story building at the end of last year.

Even at a discounted rate of less than $20 for a single, only half of the 27 rooms are now occupied, said the 32-year-old, who would only give his surname, Li.

Tourists screened

Besides the lower-than-expected number of visitors, Li complained that tighter security checks on his industry were hurting. Hotels in China have long submitted daily guest lists to local police, but until this summer, he says, it was just a formality. Now officials are going through them carefully. Not wanting any trouble, Li says he's been turning away Chinese guests without proper ID cards. He doesn't even bother with foreigners, whose registrations receive extra scrutiny.

For the Olympics, Beijing authorities have temporarily closed many karaoke rooms and other bars and erotic entertainment places deemed unfit, along with scores of factories, construction projects and other businesses that might dirty the air or the city's image. Many of these establishments are counting on life going back to normal after the Olympics are over.

"Otherwise, it would be too inconvenient for people … and will largely decrease the efficiency of the city," said Hu Xingdou, professor of economics at Beijing Institute of Technology.

"Actually, nowadays, many ordinary people sincerely hope that the Games could finish sooner."

Even at the Silk Street Market, notorious for its wide selection of counterfeit goods, merchants and salespeople weren't ruing the end of the Olympics.

"Business is a little better because of the Olympics, but not a whole lot," Zhang Yanjuan, a saleswoman at a shop selling fake Polo and Abercrombie & Fitch shirts, said Wednesday afternoon when the six-story mall on the city's east end was jammed with crowds of foreigners, including athletes. "Everybody said that when the Olympics come, we would make a small fortune. But everybody was wrong."

Why Isn’t Oil Skyrocketing ?
Olympics ads push a global theme