Hamburg/Berlin  - Sports fans with valid tickets will be counting the days until this year's Summer Olympics in China, but the athletics extravaganza is a turn-off as far as many other tourists are concerned. Some travel operators are even reporting a marked drop in enquiries.

Those keen on culture should wait until the sports wave has ebbed especially since the Olympics seem to have driven up the price of hotel rooms and other services.

Germans are among the world's keenest travellers yet operators are agreed that fewer will be heading for China this year.

The Tibet controversy and discussions on possible new visa restrictions are also proving to be a dampener, said Sibylle Zeuch, spokeswoman for the German Travel Trade Association in Berlin.

"We've seen a massive drop this year in the number of people booking trips to China," said Ury Steinweg, who runs the Gebeco travel company in the northern German city of Kiel.

Not that overall interest in the country has declined. After all, in China nothing has changed, the expert said.

"The situation is exactly as it was a year ago. Everyone knows that China does not conform to what we regard as democracy."

The "Tibet crisis," has been going on for decades, Steinweg said.

Upmarket operator Studiosus, which specializes in packages for tourists interested in culture and art, had expected to see a drop in bookings for its Chinese trips of between 20 and 25 per cent "but that percentage is now likely to be higher," spokeswoman Michaela Tedsen said in Munich.

There have been few cancellations but a growing number of vacationers are transferring their bookings to other destinations.

"Last year was an excellent one for us and we notched up growth of 20 per cent," said Liu Guosheng, managing director of China Tours in Hamburg.

"Because of the Olympic Games we were anticipating a tough 2008 although at the start of the year bookings were strong," he added. Since February the trend has been downward.

"We are now experiencing a 30-per-cent drop compared to the same time in 2007," said Liu.

Fellow Hamburg-based tour company Caissa reports that trade is still holding up, its boss Mang Chen said. ]

"We are actually 30 per cent up on last year," he said but went on to say that if the Tibet conflict continues to receive heavy media coverage, interest in visiting China this year is bound to tail off.

Tibet's fast-growing tourism industry has already come to a halt in the wake the violent protests which began in the capital Lhasa last March and resulted in a major crackdown by Chinese security forces. (dpa)