Having just said goodbye to the Moon Festival, Beijing's tourist sector is bracing even more nervously for an extremely busy National Day holiday.
As the nation's capital, the city is always the prime target in early October for people from all over the country to spend their days off. According to the Beijing Morning Post, a city-wide preparation campaign is in full swing, following a mobilization meeting Wednesday among all related tourist departments.
Officials admit Beijing's hotels, transportation, traffic, scenic spots and all other tourism-related facilities are facing tremendous pressure. Service problems already surfaced in May during the Labor Day holidays. Among the suggested measures to ease the pressure, are the establishment of constantly updated exchange of information services among various sectors, expansion of service capacities in major attractions, and the setup of more temporary beds in hotels.
Meanwhile, the Economic Daily reports at least two million travelers from home and abroad are expected to come and stay in Beijing during the upcoming holiday season. But less than 500 thousand hotel beds will be available at the time.
So the city government is suggesting that all empty rooms or idle facilities for other uses be prepared to accomodate the swarms of visitors.
If all these measures still prove to be insufficient, of course Beijing's Hotels and Travel Agencies will not be the only ones given a hard time. The tourists themselves will also suffer.
So the Guangzhou-based Nanfang Daily is advising people to plan their trip early and make wise decisions.
The newspaper says early decisions will help travel agencies and hotels to make early preparations. Also the travelers will have more options to choose from.
Beijing, Huangshang or the Yellow Mountain in eastern Anhui and Hainan island in the south are always the over-heated favorites. But the Nanfang Daily suggests some quieter places like the innner-Mongolia grasslands, the Gobi Desert in northwestern Xinjiang and many others that are really worth considering and actually wonderful places to go.
(China Radio International)
