Is it too early to book your 2008 Olympics travel arrangements?

Is it too early to book your 2008 Olympics travel arrangements?
It's never too early to make arrangements for a blockbuster event—or
is it? In fact, for many such events, you can start too early. That's
certainly the case for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing: No
reservations are available yet. Even though you can't book anything,
however, you can at least start some preliminary planning.

A reader recently asked, "Going to the Beijing Summer Olympics in 2008
seems like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. But most of my
international travel has been pre-arranged through work or school, so
I don't have a travel agent I can trust. I've never tried to
coordinate all the different facets of something like an Olympic trip,
and I'm not sure where to start. I'm also wondering: Am I trying to do
this too early, when reservations may not all be worked out by the
host sites yet? I want to get my reservations in for the best places
and deals now. What should I be doing?"

Where to start

As this reader suspects, it's far too early to book firm reservations
now. Airlines typically don't accept bookings more than 330 days in
advance, game sponsors haven't yet priced or allocated tickets, hotels
haven't set up room allocations or prices, and tour operators haven't
developed packages. Given recent history, though, here are some of the
developments you might expect:

1. Olympics authorities will likely designate one or more wholesalers
in each major country to sell airfare-hotel-event packages plus event
tickets. To my knowledge, no U.S. wholesalers have yet been designated
for 2008. Once designated, those wholesalers will offer their own
tours; they'll also sell to other tour operators.

2. If you want to buy individual event tickets and arrange your own
transportation and accommodations, wholesalers and their affiliates
will probably offer individual event tickets as well as packages.
While tickets are usually sold first-come, first-served, tie-in
purchases may be required. If you want to see the gymnastics finals,
for example, you might also have to buy tickets to an early round of
some lesser event.

3. Depending on the relative demand, some operators in other countries
may offer their ticket allocations in the U.S. market. That's against
Olympic rules, but not illegal. Usually, those third-country
allocations become available late in the process, if at all.

4. Once on the market, tickets are likely to sell out quickly. That
may or may not be the case, however, for accommodations and airline
seats. In several of the recent cycles, sponsoring cities have been
disappointed by low numbers of international visitors. While the
stands were full, most of the spectators were locals who didn't spend
much on hotel accommodations and therefore didn't contribute as much
as hoped to the local economies. Whether this will happen in 2008 is
anybody's guess.

5. While airline seats and tickets are not yet available, you might be
able to book hotel accommodations this far in advance—it depends
entirely on individual hotels. You could check a few websites or a
guidebook, select a few hotels, and inquire about early booking. I
suspect, however, that any such hotel would reserve the right to
change the price.

6. If you want to be sure of your arrangements, act as soon as the
market opens up to American travelers. But if you have a gambling
spirit, you might consider waiting until a month or two before the
games begin to find some markdowns in airfares or hotels.

Keep your eyes open

Clearly, you'll want to keep tabs on Olympic marketing and be prepared
to act as soon as bookings become available. Here are some places to
monitor:

* Beijing 2008 is the official website for the 2008 games; the
home page is in Chinese, so click on "English" in the upper left
corner for an English version. As of this writing, the site shows no
information about tickets, accommodations, or tours.
* CoSport is an official U.S. outlet for tickets to the 2006
winter games in Torino, and it will be handling 2008 tickets as well.
* City Travel is taking pre-registrations from travelers
interested in the 2008 games. At this point, though, it's unclear what
this might get you.

http://www.smartertravel.com/advice/...5&u=SL4F6B4DC5


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