The Beijing Games raised the bar for the Olympic Movement and brought positive changes to China that are likely to continue well into the future, the president of the IOC said on Sunday.
Speaking at the closing press conference of the Games of the XXIX Olympiad, Rogge said the Beijing Games demonstrated the universal appeal of Olympic values. A record 204 National Olympic Committees (NOCs) sent athletes to China, and a record 87 NOCs joined the medal count.
The IOC president also noted that the Games are likely to be the most-watched Olympic Games in history, seen by more people in more places than ever. The Beijing Games were the first to have worldwide digital coverage.
Rogge said the tangible benefits include the sports venues, a new airport terminal, new roads, improvements to mass transit and other infrastructure that was put in place for the Games. He said most of the sports venues were built near universities to ensure their use after the Olympic Games.
He also expressed hope that the Olympic experience would encourage more openness in China. (Source: IOC)
All nicely said and done, but what does the future hold for the hotel & travel industry? (and the economy..)The year did not start off very well, Beijing received 9.2 percent fewer tourists than the same period last year for the first 7 months of 2008. This was caused by a combination of the tighter visa policies, the Sichuan earthquake, Tibet riots and the large scale floods in South China.
Companies and corporate travel have been avoiding China as well; events & conferences have been delayed or relocated to other places, as "rates are sky-high and visas are a nightmare".
During the games, top end hotel were enjoying high rates, USD 1,200 and upwards, however occupancies were lacking. Sources tell us most hotels were hovering only around the 60-65% mark.
It is history repeating again and the industry can't seem to learn from the past.
The Spiegel Online quotes: "
Like Olympic cities Barcelona and Sydney before it, Beijing built new hotels and refurbished old ones in preparation. Many have opened in the past several months, and Beijing now has 5,790 hotels or one-fifth more than it did at the end of 2007, according to the capital's tourism bureau.
After the Olympics, hotels in both Barcelona and Sydney saw their occupancy rates plummet. (Athens managed to avoid that fate because high land prices and the lack of building sites kept the number of new hotels in check.) "
But the signs are no good. Hong Liang, the senior China economist at Goldman Sachs quoted to IHT, "China has slowed down a lot already, but it's going to slow down more"
But fears of a post-Olympic slowdown have become part of the popular culture in China, and a subject of great interest among stock market investors. Chinese stocks have fallen by more than half after soaring to records last year. (Source: IHT)
Chinese economists have a different view though; in June, Fan Gang, a member of the central bank monetary policy board, pointed out the total investment in the games is a fraction of Chinese gross domestic product, which topped US$3.6 trillion in 2007.
"China is a big country. Beijing is small," Xinhua quoted Fan as saying. "Even if Beijing's investment in infrastructure drops sharply after the games, it would not have a significant impact on the whole economy." (Source: CNN)There are still a number of international chains preparing to open their hotels. To name just a few: Fairmont, Mandarin Oriental, Shangri-La's China World phase 3 and of course the expansion powerhouse IHG with currently 16 hotels operational in the Chinese capital alone and its newly launched brand, ‘Express by Holiday Inn' gearing up to flood the Chinese market.
Our guess is, time will tell - with Beijing still being the capital of China, it might be "business as usual", although hard to believe, there must be some kind of post-Olympic hangover, no?
Lets see how Shanghai will handle the 2010 Expo.
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