Less than one month from the Beijing Olympic Games, some of China's travel agencies said they had overestimated the number of domestic travelers for the sporting spectacular to the host city.

Zhang Lei, a spokesman with the Shanghai-based Spring International Travel Service Ltd., said its Olympic tourist products had met with slack market response.

"We have offered customers a dozen Olympic travel routes with prices ranging from 2,000 yuan (293 U.S. dollars) to 7,000 yuan per person. They have registered about 1,000 tourists for the past two months, which was 50 percent lower than our objective."

Many Chinese travel agencies have jumped on the bandwagon promoting packages highlighting sports venues and activities, cultural relics, museums and other special sights in and around Beijing.

Zhang disclosed his company had focused on family travel because the opening of the Games coincided with the summer vacation of Chinese schools, when kids could join their family members for travel.

"Quite unexpectedly, most of our Olympic tourists are young people, and some of them lovers," he said.

Yin Jun, manager of the Jiangsu provincial branch of China Travel Service Ltd., attributed the low market mainly to the hefty travel cost in Beijing.

"Travel from Jiangsu to the national capital costs about 2,000 yuan per person in normal days, but our Olympic tourist products are priced above 6,000 yuan on average," he said.

The company quoted 7,500 yuan in price for its prime travel route, which would include a ticket for the race by China hurdling superstar Liu Xiang during the Games.

The manager said the price was driven up by the increased cost, as the price of a two-star hotel room was poised to jump from 120 yuan normally to 1,200 yuan during the Games; the rental fee of a tourist bus would more than triple from the current 1,000 yuan a day.

Beijing is gearing up to welcome 500,000 foreign visitors and more than 500,000 domestic tourists in the August Olympiad, according to an official forecast.

Security and traffic control measures taken by the host city have scared away some potential customers, Yin said.

This was also cited as the reason by some travel agencies such as China International Travel Service in Nanjing to have shunned away from the Olympic travel market.

"Summer is China's golden travel season. There are plenty of hot tourist destinations other than Beijing," said Sun Bing, the agency's deputy general manager.

(Xinhua News Agency July 17, 2008)