An aging Chinese factory owner uses his guanxi and business license to save scores of laowai from being shipped out of the country. That would be a good premise for a movie about some of the worries many people have in China these days. Lots of visa hassles. Lots of headaches.

I mentioned in the past how Beijing hotels are not expecting great Q3 financial returns because an Olympic host city usually has decreased business pre- and post-Olympics. Plus, China has banned many conferences from Beijing for about 3 months around the time of the Olympics.

Now with the visa hassles, hotels outside of Beijing are also being affected. One of my colleagues had a meeting with a 5-star hotel in Shanghai this morning and the general manager of the hotel was complaining about a 80+ person conference had canceled because many of the overseas visitors could not secure visas to enter China. We are hearing of other situations around China where hotels are seeing loss of business because of visa hassles for conference/exhibition attendees. A typical 4-star or 5-star hotel might only earn 50% of its revenue from hotel rooms, and the other part of its income comes from F&B and MICE (meetings, incentive travel, conferences, and exhibitions).

Isn't Visa a sponsor for the Olympics? Seems like a bevy of creative commercials could come from that relationship coupled with the current state of affairs.