Lhasa, dubbed the city of sunlight on the roof of the world, has
made efforts to be prepared for an influx of tourists during the
seven-day holiday starting May 1, said a local tourist
official.
There are now 226 star-rated hotels and guest houses in Lhasa,
with 22,798 beds, an increase of 33 hotels and 2,210 beds from a
year ago.
Sixty-two percent of the rooms of the 99 hotels authorized to
handle overseas tourists have been pre-booked, according to Ga Ga,
director of Lhasa tourism bureau.
Ga Ga predicts Lhasa, which is the capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region, will have close to
200,000 tourist arrivals between May 1 and 7.
"We began preparing for the forthcoming holiday travel season in
late March," said the official. The city tourism bureau has offered
crash courses, on how to deal with customers, to more than 700
former herders who now work in downtown hotels.
The remote southwestern Chinese region handled more than 2.51
million tourists last year, of whom 154,800 were overseas tourists.
They netted the region 2.77 billion yuan in revenue.
Tibet is expected to host 3 million tourists and rake in 3.4
billion yuan this year, according to Jin Shixun, director of the
development and reform commission of Tibet Autonomous Regional
Government.
The region had 116,700 domestic and overseas tourists in the
first three months of the year, a rise of 15.8 percent from a year
ago, and raked in 105 million yuan in revenue, according to figures
from Tibet Autonomous Regional Bureau of Statistics.
The new Qinghai-Tibet railway, which went into
operation last July, is being credited with helping create the
tourist boom. (US$1 equals to 7.73 yuan)
(Xinhua News Agency May 1, 2007)
