By Phurbu Thinley
Dharamsala, October 17: Chinese Communist authorities have now decided to cut admission fees to key attractions in Tibet in an effort to boost tourism to the region after massive demonstrations against Chinese rule in March forced China to lock down Tibet for months.
Tibet is cutting admission fees to key attractions in an effort to boost tourism to the region after riots in March led to a dramatic drop in visitor numbers, Chinese state media said Friday.
Admission fees at most scenic and cultural spots will be cut by half from Monday to attract more travellers to the Himalayan region during winter, the official Xinhua news agency said.
Plans to double admission fees to the Potala Palace, the former residence of Tibet’s exiled leader His Holiness the Dalai Lama, have been scrapped, the report said.
Beijing barred all tourists from going to Tibet after a massive government crackdown on Tibetan demonstrations that broke out in Lhasa on March 10 against Chinese rule, and then spread to other Tibetan areas.
Chinese tour groups were allowed back in at the end of April, and visitors from Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan were subsequently given the green light to go early May.
Foreign visitors, however, were only allowed back in at the end of June.
The number of tourists visiting Tibet in the first half of this year fell 70 percent from the previous year, according to state media.
More than 340,000 travellers went to Tibet between January and June this year, the official Tibet Daily newspaper said, a dramatic drop from the same period in 2007 when over 1.1 million people visited.
It is the first time Tibet has reduced the price of tickets at nearly all its tourist attractions, Xinhua quoted a Chinese official of the Tibet tourism bureau, as saying.
The tourism bureau had predicted early this year that visitor numbers would hit five million in 2008, but the March unrest and the subsequent government clampdown put a stop to that.
China has reported only 22 people were killed in the riots, but Tibet’s Government in exile based in India says accuses China of killing over 200 Tibetans and injuring many more during the brutal crackdown. Besides, China has detained more than 1,000 Tibetans, although human rights groups say the number could be higher and remains unaccounted for.
Following massive clampdown, Tibet remained under intense military lockdown. China blocked communications and, kicked out journalists and tourists out of Tibet, making it almost impossible for the outside world to verify the number of dead and the situation inside the region.
