Night visitors up, more wanted

• Source: Global Times
• [08:24 August 06 2010]
• Comments

Visitors tour the Expo Park at night last month. Photo: Xinhua

By Duan Wuning

Expo organizers said Thursday they are working to improve the nightlife at the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai for the remainder of the summer as hot temperatures have encouraged more visitors to tour the park during the evenings.

Nighttime visitors have increased by nearly 60 percent from last month with an average of some 25,000 daily visitors entering the park after 5 pm this month so far, up from previous crowds of 15,000.

Hong Hao, director of the Shanghai World Expo Coordination Bureau, said that they are planning to offer more shows in the evenings for night owls, and are negotiating with pavilions to offer more reservation tickets for late visitors.

Hong encouraged more visitors to go during the evening, when tickets are cheaper at 90 yuan ($13.29) a pop, the weather cooler and crowds fewer than during the day. Night visitors can enter the park as late as 9 pm, and stay until midnight.

However, without the compliance of popular pavilions, it seems that night visitors may not get a chance to tour highly in-demand structures, including the China, Taiwan and Saudi Arabia pavilions. These pavilions said Thursday that they would not adjust the distribution times of their reservation tickets.

According to the Taiwan Pavilion, which hands out 4,000 reservation passes twice daily at 9:30 and 3:30 pm, it would be too hard to change things now.

"We've finally found a good balance in our ticket distribution times," a press officer surnamed Wang, from the Taiwan Pavilion, told the Global Times Thursday. "These times work best for visitors and allow us to keep the flow of visitors moving well, which is important."