Plenty of Beijing hotel rooms, if you haggle: official

BEIJING (Reuters) - Reports of Beijing hotels ramping up prices for next year's Olympic Games are based on a misunderstanding of Chinese negotiating techniques, an official said on Tuesday.

Local media reports in the first half of this year said hotels in the Chinese capital were charging up to 10 times their usual rates for next August.

"It is a game between the hotel owners and the market," Penny Xiang, deputy director of Games Services for Beijing Organising Committee (BOCOG), told reporters on Tuesday.

"The reason is that there were many enquiries at that time, which released a signal that the market demand was extremely high," she added.

Xiang said the exorbitant rates are mainly a sales strategy of the hotels and reasonable deals were available if buyers kept haggling.

"As far as I know there are not many hotels that have actually signed contracts with clients, and those that have signed contracts are actually not at very high price," she said.

"The Chinese way of dealing with something we're not sure about is to wait and see, especially when many hotel owners thought they could get a better price next year."

But city officials and Olympics organizers contributed to the rush for hotel rooms earlier this year by urging visitors to book early in order to guarantee a room.

Xiang told Reuters in an interview in April that the Organising Committee had already booked 70 percent or more of the rooms in 122 top-ranked hotels closest to the Olympics venues. Those rooms are reserved for visiting Olympics officials, sponsoring companies and the media.

For all of the remaining hotel rooms in the city, Xiang reiterated on Tuesday that the government would not intervene to stop price gouging adding that she was confident the market would settle down closer to the time the Games begin.

"When the demand and supply reach a balance, it will not be possible to keep demanding such high prices," she said.

Beijing is expecting 500,000 foreign visitors and more than a million domestic tourists in a daily flow of about 280,000 during the Games.

"Last year hotels were demanding people block book for 18-20 days, but now they have changed their policy (so) that the clients can book rooms for only four or five days, or a week," she said.

(Editing by Ken Wills)