A senior official said yesterday that the government will not intervene in the pricing of hotel rooms during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, until an "extreme situation occurs".

By "extreme", Du Jiang, director of the Beijing tourism administration, said he meant a situation where a foreign visitor was being asked to pay $10,000 for a room despite a hotel having plenty of vacancies.

"That is when the government should take action," he said at a press conference for the Beijing International Tourism Expo 2007, which runs from today until Saturday.

However, he said: "At present, reservations are steadily coming in and the prices appear acceptable to both sides. So the administration has no plans to intervene. We will let the market decide."

Media reports have shown that some hotels are quoting prices six to 10 times their standard rates for bookings during the Olympics.

The highest room rate so far reported was at the Hotel Kunlun, a five-star hotel that will allocate 70 percent of its rooms to accredited clients of the Olympic Family. It plans to charge 12,000 yuan ($1,600) per night during the Games for each of its remaining.

According to media reports, even budget hotels are planning to bump up their prices by 600-700 percent to around 1,400 yuan per night.

At the press conference yesterday, Du said there will be enough hotel rooms to accommodate visitors from home and abroad.

Official forecasts by the Beijing tourism administration and the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG), said an average of 290,000 visitors will need accommodation on each day of the Games.

"Beijing currently has 280,000 hotel rooms, which should be enough to accommodate visitors," Du said.

The number of rooms will also grow next year, with the opening of 57 new hotels, he said.

However, Du said he did have some concerns.

"Beijing has no problem fulfilling its promise to provide 130,000 rooms in 800 star hotels during the Games, which should be enough to accommodate our foreign guests," he said.

But more and more domestic travelers want to stay at star hotels instead of cheaper, unrated ones, he said.

(China Daily 06/21/2007 page5)