It was built and they're coming.

Tourists from across China are surging into Beijing in the wake of last year's Olympics, spurred on by the new look of the old capital.

"Most tourists came to feel the changes in Beijing after the Olympic Games. It is the new Beijing they are curious about," said Zhang Lingjie, deputy manager of the domestic department with the China International Travel Service head office.

About 85.4 million tourists visited Beijing in the first half of this year, an increase of 20.8 percent over the same period last year.

Those travelers brought with them revenue of 127.1 billion yuan ($18.6 billion) up 14.6 percent, according to statistics released by the municipal tourism authority yesterday.

The strong growth was thanks to a prosperous domestic tourism market, as 83.6 million of the tourists who came to Beijing, an annual increase of 21.4 percent, were from the Chinese mainland.

"This is really not easy to achieve with the impact of the global financial crisis and the flu," Zhang Huiguang, director of Beijing Tourism Administration, said at a press conference.

On the downside, only about 1.8 million tourists from outside the mainland visited Beijing in the first six months of the year, "an obvious slump from the previous years", said Zhang Lingjie, though she refused to make comparisons with the first six months of last year. She did say, however, that January's numbers had dropped 29 percent.

The impact of fewer international tourists has affected Beijing's four- and five-star hotels, which suffered "an especially low room occupancy rate", a tourism official who insisted on anonymity told China Daily yesterday.

Hotels are downsizing or involving every employee in sales in order to boost business, he said.

The slack business has also forced high-level hotels to cut room rates. According to ctrip.com, a domestic online travel service, a five-star hotel on Beijing's Financial Street now charges between 398 yuan and 498 yuan for a room.

But Zhang Huiguang said the market for travelers from outside the mainland has been slowly warming up, especially over the past two months.

Arrivals hit 364,000 in May and 325,000 in June, up 5.1 and 8.8 percent respectively year over year, according to bureau statistics.

Promotions in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macao have paid off, as arrivals from these regions have increased by 40 to 60 percent, said Zhang Lingjie.

In the latter half of this year, the bureau plans to strengthen promotions in other parts of Asia including Japan and South Korea.

"Beijing will have a better performance in July, August, and October," she said.

The city tourism bureau earlier set a goal of attracting 154 million tourists and 236 billion yuan of revenue this year.

The two goals are respectively 5.6 percent and 6.3 percent higher than 2008.

(China Daily July 29, 2009)