Fewer tourists from foreign countries and Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan visited Beijing in the first five months of the year, the first year-on-year decline since 2005.
The Beijing Statistics Bureau announced on Thursday that 1.577 million visits to the Olympic host city were made by inbound tourists during the January-May period, down 1.6 percent from the same period last year.
Visitors from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan accounted for most of the decline, with their number down 18.6 percent to 179,000.
However, visitors from foreign countries made about 1.4 million trips to Beijing, growing a slight 1 percent.
As the Olympics near, the number of inbound visits fell a distinct 14.2 percent to 346,000 in May, mostly because hotel rooms in Beijing got more difficult to book as many were upgrading or renovating for the Games.
Also, the prices of travel packages to Beijing have risen in many major tourist source countries, including Japan and the United States, and some tourist buses have been reserved by the organizers of the games, factors that were also said to be affecting the city's tourism industry.
In May, foreign nationals made 312,000 visits to the city, down12.5 percent year-on-year, and visitors from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macao were 26.6 percent fewer.
Source: Xinhua
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