One reason why so many people are staying away from the Olympics, and from China during this period, is becuase of all of the negative publicity that China has been getting in the western media.

There is an interesting discussion starting to take shape over on the www.underthejacaranda.wordpress.com blog, about why the western media produce so many negative images of China. It's worth checking out.

@Tim
That's why I'm staying away from Beijing for the time being. There is no point in trying to go to Beijing and fighting for your way around.

On a normal day, it is already crowded enough without having some type of special event going on.

I hope the event goes well and Beijing can return to normal business soon.

You go to Beijing for jingoistic reasons?

In the good old days, if the numbers became a problem, an order will be issued to round up some foreigners (these days, the cheapest, most accessible ones might be North Koreans or Mongolians), have them cross the border, stay the absolute minimum amount of time to qualify as a "statistic" as a Beijing visitor, and then send them home.

A slightly more modern version would be to empty out the hostels in SE Asia for white looking faces and do the same.

Ahhhh how far has China come from those days.

Now, when they say they are going to clear the air, they actually mean it --- and foreigners are allowed to report on what they see looking out of their windows.

Let's have a hand for the Beijing Olympics Committee, and for all those people who had to make sacrifices to make this event happen.

Not all of them are wealthy --- there are many small businesses who will lose business for one reason or another during the games, including ones forced to close for security reasons near some sites.

We hear about the factory shutdowns and the big stuff, but we don't see the little people who also made sacrifices.

Let's give all these people a big round of applause.

For it is them, Chinese people from all walks of life, that made sacrifices to make the Olympics possible.

There are many reasons for lower numbers of visitors as Junhui notes.

Here is a thought from people who have personally witnessed Olympics in Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Montreal:

While the hype makes you think visitors will flood into these cities, in reality, the opposite is true.

Every effort is made to discourage visitors, encourage residents to move out and stay out for the duration of the games.

Sky high prices for hotels (or the rental of private homes in many Olympics sites) is a great way to discourage your average upper middle class tourist from outside China, and also from China.

The person who witnessed the LA Olympics, which is very comparable to Beijing in terms of scale and scope, noted that LA traffic, which is normally terrible, greatly improved during the games as road traffic plunged.

So, there may be less to this story than one might think.

It is SOP for the Olympic Committee to clean out the town --- the event is for the global elite, and the masses can watch it on TV.

What is far more important than the number of foreigners and visitors is that the games are a commercial success - i.e. the sponsors who paid dearly for TV rights, etc. make money from the games.

How many journalists, athelets etc, in addition to the 400,000 tourists, will come?

I'm not terribly worried about hotel prices. If there are no business, hotels will surely lower down their prices. A simple demand and supply issue.

Tim,

What's the average stay for the 420,000 visitors in 2007? And what is the expected average stay for the 400,000 this year?

Will there be enough security people to assign 3 of them to follow each visitor around the clock?