For the lucky people who have tickets to the Beijing Olympics next year there could be a problem on the horizon: finding a place to stay. People eligible to stay in the Olympic Village face no problems. According to Xiang Ping, Vice Director of the Games Services Department of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad ( BOCOG), the number of registered guests in Beijing during the Olympic season, including athletes, referees, foreign governmental officials, sponsors and media workers, is expected to reach 50,000. Some of them will reside in the Olympic Village where there will be more than 60 three-star apartment buildings, which are to be finished by the end of this year. Another 28,000 hotel rooms are needed for the rest of the guests.

So far 112 starred hotels in Beijing have signed contracts with BOCOG to ensure 70 percent of the rooms are reserved for overseas spectators and the media. "Most of these are four- and five-star hotels, and a few are two-star ones," said Xiong Yumei, Deputy Director of the Beijing Tourism Administration (BTA).

The administration estimated that the 17 days of the Olympics will witness at least 2 million domestic and 500,000 overseas tourists. A daily average of 400,000 people will be accommodated, and the city will need to provide some 100,000 hotel rooms for overseas guests and 160,000-180,000 for domestic tourists. This represents a huge business opportunity for Beijing's hotel industry and also a test for the capacity and service quality of its accommodation.

Not a problem

Accommodation will not be a problem during the Olympic season in 2008, said Du Jiang, Director of the BTA. The city now has 4,681 hotels, inns or hostels, 700 of which are star-rated. Another 100 star-rated hotels are being built or renovated. With non-star-rated hotels, the total number of guest rooms amounts to 286,900 with 572,500 beds.

"The three-star hotels and above will be mainly used to house overseas tourists and the other ones for domestic tourists," said Qin Yu, an expert on the hotel industry from Beijing International Studies University. He said both the two groups of hotels have their advantages. The starred ones excel in their standard of management and high-level of services, while the other hotels, many of which enjoy the proximity to the sports venues, are more affordable.

To avoid there being over-investment for the short-term needs of the Olympics, Beijing's accommodation plan is multi-level, focusing on star- and non-star-rated hotels and employing hotels on the outskirts of Beijing as backups, according to Zhou Shuqi, an official with the BTA.

Around the capital city are many tourism cities worth a visit during the Olympic season. "In the neighboring Hebei Province there are 56 star-rated hotels providing 5,639 guestrooms and more than 10,000 beds," said Zhou.

Price concern

Though BOCOG has made a promise to prevent any shortage of accommodation during the games, a hotel price hike is inevitable. "It's no easier to get a comfortable and cheap bed than to obtain an Olympic Game ticket," commented the state-owned Xinhua News Agency.

The price of a bed will skyrocket by four or five times for star-rated hotels during the Olympics. "Only a few administrative standard rooms are left for Olympic reservation at 6,000 yuan per night," said the 4-star Jinglun Toronto Hotel in Beijing. The price for this kind of room is 1,200 yuan for one night at present.

Price hikes will be common among other hotels that have signed to BOCOG. A staff member at the five-star Kunlun Hotel said that the hotel's standard rooms have all been booked and only suites are left to be reserved. The price for a suite stands at 10,000 yuan per night.

BOCOG has a limit for the contracted hotels: a standard room in five-star, four-star and three-star hotels should be no more than 2,960, 2,320 and 1,600 yuan per night respectively. The price of rooms not included in the agreement in the contracted hotels and non-contracted guesthouses will not be controlled by BOCOG, said Xiang of BOCOG. As for the many non-contracted star-rated hotels, budget hotels and private inns, though they don't have the Olympic reservation service, they are also likely to raise prices.

"It's normal for the price to rise, so government intervention is not necessary unless it rises to an unaffordable level," said Qin. "The hotel industry is an open market and should not be subject to administrative intervention."

"The last five sessions of the Olympic Games showed that it's normal for the price of accommodation to rise by four or five times during the Olympic period," said Dai Bin, from the Beijing International Studies University.

However, business insiders have warned that Beijing should avoid the fault of the 2004 Athens Games, during which high hotel prices kept many tourists away and undermined the tourism industry. The best way to avoid this is to improve the facilities and quality of the 4,000 unrated hotels and guesthouses to balance supply and demand, according to the China National Tourism Administration.

The Beijing authorities have produced a set of regulations to standardize the security and sanitation of unrated hotels this March. "So far the overall service level of Beijing's hotel industry has been rising fast and more than 200 have reached the standard and obtained the qualification for Olympic reception. We are endeavoring to have 1,000 qualified unrated hotels by the first half of 2008," said Zhou.

Ceremony under way

According to BOCOG, the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games will start at 8 p.m. Beijing Time on August 8 next year and will last three-and-a-half hours. The flame lighting ceremony will begin at 23:30 that evening.

The plans of the opening and closing ceremonies, which were designed by a team led by internationally acclaimed Chinese director Zhang Yimou, were approved by the International Olympic Committee in this August.

The opening ceremony will begin with the entrance of the athletes, followed by an artistic program lasting one and half hours and end with the lighting of the flame.

The production team for the opening and closing ceremonies has selected a venue in Beijing's suburbs to rehearse. The first batch of performers has been chosen and has been rehearsing in secret since August.

Officials said the ceremony will represent a "high-level Olympics with distinctive features."