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CHINA> Top News
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Sweet home-stay for foreigners during Expo
By Wang Zhenghua and Shi Yingying (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-07-10 13:02 One of the earliest applicants, Wu's family is located on the top floor of a six-story apartment building in a well-greened community. It is next to a street lined with restaurants and provides easy access to the expo garden by subway. Suggesting she has a high threshold for pain, Wu said she would welcome cigarette smokers and all-night party-goers alike, as well as people of any religious denomination. "We are easy-going people," she said. Meanwhile, Zhang Lanyou, another applicant, has already emptied a 16-sq-m room in case she gets the green-light. But guests need to be vegetarian to enjoy her cooking, warned the 62-year-old retiree. Hotel rush Major internationally branded hotels are offering a total of 6,800 rooms to bump up the supply to 25,800 by the end of this year, according to real estate company Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels.
"These star-rated hotels, along with 4,000 other hotel rooms, will offer a total of half a million beds by 2010." The Ritz-Carlton Pudong, which is set to open in April just before the expo kicks off, will offer 285 guest rooms. These will range from 50 sq m to 400 sq m, with a palatial presidential suite currently under construction to rank as one of the best accommodations the city has to offer. The hotel is one of 58 star-rated hotels currently being built in Shanghai. As a last resort, hotels in Shanghai's neighboring cities will help plug the gap during the expo.
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