Beijing's Inbound Tourist Numbers Decreased In May

On May 2008, Beijing welcomed a total of 346,000 inbound tourists, a 14.2% decrease from the same period of last year.

According to the data jointly published by the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Statistics and the Beijing Survey Team under the National Bureau of Statistics of China, the decrease rate of Beijing's inbound tourist numbers grew continuously from this March, down 1% and 5.3% in March and April, respectively. From January to May in 2008, there were a total of 1,577,000 inbound tourists to Beijing, a 1.6% decrease from the same period of last year, which was the first decrease from 2005. The Beijing Municipal Bureau of Statistics said that main reasons of the decrease in the number of inbound tourists to Beijing included snow disasters in southern China at the beginning of this year and the Sichuan earthquake disaster in May, both of which caused some of potential tourists to change their travel plans to China; some of meetings to be held in Beijing before the 2008 Olympic Games were suspended; and the cancellation of long holidays of May Day also had some impact on this.

This May, among 346,000 inbound tourists to Beijing, 34,000 were from Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, representing a 26.6% decrease from the same period of last year; while international arrivals visiting to Beijing reached a total of 312,000, a drop of 12.5% compared to the same month last year. The tourists numbers from main source markets to Beijing all went down, of these 52,000 from the USA, a 17.1% decrease from May 2007; 31,000 from Japan, a 44.9% decrease; and 39,000 from South Korea, a 9.1% decrease. With regard to intercontinental markets, the number of tourists from Asia, Europe, North America, Oceania and Africa also decreased by different degrees.

The statistics from Beijing Tourism Bureau indicate that for the first five months of 2008, occupancy rate of all five-star hotels in the city averaged 77% while that of four-star standard hotels only was about 45%.