(Caixin) Thousands of tourists who flocked to Beijing's Forbidden City at the start of the weeklong National Day holiday discovered the famous tourist attraction was living up to its historical name.
The former residence of Ming and Qing dynasty emperors was once again forbidding entry to droves of ordinary citizens who showed up to the massive complex this week, only to discover tickets were sold out long ago. The Oct. 2 sellout happened at lightning speed, as the old and new converged with the first official sale of all Forbidden City tickets only over the internet.
The top Chinese tourist attraction, second only to perhaps the Great Wall, has been experimenting with online ticket sales since 2011, according to a report on web portal Sina. But the site's operators have been trialing a plan to go online-only for much of the summer, and formally rolled out the new system to kick off the weeklong National Day holiday that started Oct. 1.
Tickets for Oct. 2 visits went were sold out just before 2 a.m. that morning, while tickets for Oct. 3 were gone about 12 hours later, Sina reported. The attraction, also called the Palace Museum, currently limits the number of daily visitors to 80,000, with tickets costing a modest 60 yuan ($9.09) for peak times and 40 yuan for off-peak.
Many people arrived at the attraction on Oct. 2 unaware of the internet-only ticket policy. A few got lucky and were able to buy a smattering of tickets that showed up on the website during the day due to last-minute cancellations, Sina reported. But the vast majority were forced to hang around the Forbidden City's various gates, where they were seen taking photos of their close encounter with the famous complex that kept out most people through history with its vast red surrounding wall and moat.
China is the world's largest internet market with more than 700 million web surfers. As that number has grown, the ratio of people buying their Forbidden City tickets online has grown steadily from less than 2% in 2012 to about 40% last year.
In a bid to clear away unruly ticket lines and better control crowd flows, the attraction's operators launched a trial program aimed at selling all tickets over the internet in July, before rolling out the formal internet-only system this week. Online ticket sales reached 77% during the trial period, during which time unaware visitors could visit onsite kiosks where attendants helped them to buy tickets over their smartphones.
The Forbidden City isn't the only famous tourist attraction experimenting with new high-tech concepts. Earlier this year, the nation's tourism administration announced an ambitious plan that calls for free Wi-Fi and other high-tech bells and whistles in all of the nation's top tourist attractions, including the Great Wall and Forbidden City, by 2020.
Source: Caixin by Yang Ge
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