Beijing’s top-end hotels are not yet fully booked for the Olympic period this August, the city’s tourism office says.

Director of Beijing’s Tourism Bureau Zhang Huiguang says the crunch that was predicted doesn’t seem to be happening, Associate Press reports.

She says only 77 percent of capacity in the city’s five-star hotels have been booked during the 8-24 August Olympic Games, and the four-star hotel rate is only 44 percent.

Take up is even lower for three- and two-star properties, Zhang says.

Zhang suggests a possible reason for the slow bookings could be the government’s crackdown on visas, aimed at deterring possible activists from disrupting the games.

By staff writer