The sale of the second tranche of Olympic tickets was suspended
last night after overwhelming demand caused chaos during the day:
the booking system crashed, phone lines were jammed and serpentine
queues formed at banks.
A woman looks at a brochure as she waits in
line to purchase tickets for next year's Olympic Games, at the
headquarters of the Bank of China in Beijing October 30, 2007.
[Agencies]
An official from the BOCOG Ticketing Center said Tuesday night
that the Games organizers had decided to temporarily halt domestic
ticket sales to improve the technical plan and will announce new
ticketing information on November 5.
"Because of the overwhelming volume of page visits, the
technical system was unable to perform the tasks well enough, and
many applicants were unable to successfully submit their
applications," the official said, adding: "We sincerely apologize
to the public."
The first-come-first-serve scheme had 1.85 million tickets on
sale through the booking website, a hotline and designated branches
of Bank of China.
But demand was much higher than organizers anticipated:
According to the Beijing Olympic Ticketing Center, the official
ticketing website (www.tickets.beijing2008.cn) saw 8 million hits
in the first hour starting 9 am, while the ticketing hotline
received 3.8 million calls.
Only some 9,000 tickets were sold in two hours; and the
ticketing center confirmed that successful orders will be
valid.
A total of 7 million tickets are available for the Games, with
about 75 percent reserved for domestic sale. The first 1.6 million
tickets were allocated after a lottery earlier this year. The third
phase - from April to August next year - will also sell tickets on
a first-come-first-serve basis.
Wu Chao was typical of the intrepid fans who just wouldn't give
up.
"I visited the ticketing website at 9 am sharp but failed to
place an order," said the 29-year-old IT manager in Beijing. "Then
the system crashed, and I couldn't log onto it anymore."
Wu then decided to try his luck with the ticketing hotline.
"I used two phones at the same time and kept calling for almost
half an hour," he told China Daily. But when he finally got
through, the operator told him that they were using the same
ticketing system and their system had crashed, too.
"I and my coworkers in the office have been trying all day. I
will not give up."
Some companies even encouraged their employees to turn ticket
buying into a team building activity.
The human resource department of an IT company sent a group
email the day before yesterday, asking all staff to buy tickets
online.
"We all showed up in the office before 9 am and tried to get
tickets," said Ma Mei, one of the employees. "We helped each other
and exchanged the latest information, it was a lot of fun."
Going to Bank of China branches was another way to get tickets,
but fortune favored only a few early birds.
Mu Di, who waited outside the Bank of China headquarters from
2:30 am, finally got two tickets for the men's tennis singles and
men's 100m hurdles final.
Most who waited in long queues at the 1,000 BOC branches were
not as lucky.
(China Daily October 31, 2007)
