Beijing Discovery Tours

Obviously I haven’t been keeping up with this blog lately, not that anyone noticed or cared, but it has been an interesting past month. The Beijing Summer Olympics 2008 were enormously successful, and I am not sure that I have ever had so much fun in my life! Personally I was able to attend 9 events, including basketball, field hockey, baseball, boxing, diving, and beach volleyball (that was probably the most fun event of them all, the gold medal game between the USA and Brazil). I was fortunate enough to meet the head baseball coach of my alma mater, Oklahoma State University, and watched the last half of the USA vs. Japan (USA won in extra innings) with Coach Frank Anderson, who is not only a great baseball coach but a great human being.

I met the movie actor Vince Vaughn in a nearly-deserted bar in Sanlitun, and he was gracious enough to take a picture with me even though it was very late.

All in all, it was an incredible experience and I feel very fortunate that I was able to experience such an incredible Olympic Games in my adopted hometown of Beijing. Not only was it a great Olympic Games for me on a personal level, it also seems that such positive exposure around the world has increased interest in people coming to China, and we are getting many inquiries about tours of Beijing and tours of China. It is great to see that Beijing presented such a positive image for the world, and that we will be able to show many more people what an amazing city Beijing truly is.

Just read a couple of articles that confirm what most of us here at Beijing Discovery Tours have already been thinking:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcb_china/20080715/wl_mcb_china/foreigntouristsarestayinghome

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/staff/tim_johnson/story/42143.html

We have been fortunate enough to have a few people to have booked tours of Beijing and Great Wall tours with us during the Olympics, so it has not really affected us much, but some of our friendly competitors have admitted that business is not good at all. Here’s hoping that the tourists return to Beijing once the incredibly over-hyped Beijing Summer Olympics 2008 are finally over.