BEIJING, Oct 31: Beijing Olympics organisers apologised on Wednesday after suspending ticket sales following a booking system meltdown, their first major blunder in preparations for next year’s Games.

Around 1.8 million event tickets were supposed to go on sale on Tuesday on a first-come-first-served basis for people living in China, but the organisers said demand was so great that the computer booking system crashed.

Rong Jun, head of the Beijing Olympic organising committee (BOCOG) ticketing office, said he was sorry for disappointing millions of Chinese people, some of whom vented their anger in the press and on the Internet over the fiasco.

“They have been very supportive of the Olympic Games and we were clearly not good to them in return,” he said. “So on behalf of BOCOG ticketing centre, I sincerely apologise.”

Over eight million hits on the booking website were received in the first hour on Tuesday, far more than planners had expected, BOCOG said.

The frenzy of activity was well beyond the system’s capacity of handling one million hits and processing 150,000 ticket sales in an hour.

In addition, the number of calls to the ticketing phone line exceeded 3.8 million in the first hour while many other callers were unable to get through, BOCOG said.

“We underestimated just how enthusiastic the Chinese general public are about the Olympics,” said Rong, who was hauled before the press to explain what went wrong.

He added that experts were working on upgrading the booking system and more information would be available on Nov 5, when sales would restart.

He promised the system would be fail-safe next time.

“After the improvement of the system we will make sure that... we will provide the general public with satisfactory service.” –AFP